Connection Probelm

[hareeshvs]

Hi,
I am facing a sql connection problem. I have a central server in my office. It is a windows 2000 server. And another windows 2000 server machine is in our branch office. Both machines having SQL Server 2000. We are connected this two locations through VPN. Both locations have firewall.Now the problem is, I can connect central server sql from branch office but unable to connect branch office from central server. I need this to put my db in replication.Can anybody help me...

Thanks in advance...

[skhanal]

Here are few things to check.

1. Is branch server listening on TCP/IP
2. Is it listening on default port or non default port
3. Try this from command prompt

telnet branchserver_ip sql_port

if you get a blank window, the port is not blocked by firewall. If connection fails, check with your firewall guys.

[rmiao]

Did you get any error message?

[hareeshvs]

Thaks for the reply.
I tried telnet to connect to the port. From braanch server, telnet is connecting to central server. But from central server, telnet is not connecting.

The error message is "SQL Server does not exist or access denied"

[skhanal]

Is SQL Server running?. Can you connect from branch server itself or any other machine in branch site.

It looks like 1433 is blocked by firewall, verify it with network people.

[hareeshvs]

Thanks skhanal.
We opened the 1433 port and we are able to connect it through query analyzer and able to register the server in enterprise manager. Now we are facing another issue.
I have db, "TestDB", in my central server. I added this db in merge replication & created a push subcription with the branch server.After that everything appears to work fine. I can see the snapshot agent run as part of creating
the subscription. After completing the Push Subscription wizard, I can see the merge
agent starting and it seems to have properly initialized the remote database schema
and copied the data to it. What's odd is the Merge Agent errors out with the
following error:

Last Command:

{call sp_MSgetreplicainfo(?,?,?,?,?,?,?)}

Error Message: The subscription to publication 'TestDB' is invalid.

Error Details:

The subscription to publication 'TestDB' is invalid. (Source: Merge Replication
Provider (Agent); Error number: -2147201019)

The remote server is not defined as a subscription server. (Source: yyyyy (Data
source); Error number: 14010)

I checked to make sure that on the publisher I had subscriptions enabled for the
server that I was attempting to push to. Given the error message I don't know what
else to check given that it appears that all the data seems to be copied down...

Ideas? What does it mean that the subscription is invalid? Do we have an
authenication error of sorts? If so, why is happening so late in the game?

[rmiao]

Check Microsoft kb article 321822, it may help.

[hareeshvs]

Thanks rmiao & skhanal. Some how we solved the issue & replication is working fine here. We made trusted relation between the servers.