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 Merge publication - can't create snapshot

Author  Topic 

hoogabooga
Starting Member

2 Posts

Posted - 2011-05-03 : 15:07:46
I've been using Merge Replication for years and all of a sudden, I am unable to create a snapshot. We made a number of changes to the underlying data (and reinitialized all 50 subscriptions) and now I am consistenly getting the following error messages after about 30 minutes.

- [0%] The replication agent had encountered an exception.
- Source: Replication
- Exception Type: Microsoft.SqlServer.Replication.SqlCommandTimeoutException
- Exception Message: Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding.
- Message Code: -2

Typically the snapshot takes a minute and a half. I'd really appreciate some input on this if someone can help.

Thanks,

Doug.

RickD
Slow But Sure Yak Herding Master

3608 Posts

Posted - 2011-05-04 : 03:52:35
Does the SQL Agent still have access to the snapshot directory? Are any files created in the directory?

Did you reinitialise the Snapshot agent and create a new snapshot (I know it sounds silly, but sometimes people don't)?

Have you checked for locking contention? sp_locks will help there..
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hoogabooga
Starting Member

2 Posts

Posted - 2011-05-04 : 09:50:16
Thanks for your reply. To your questions,

I've confirmed that the SQL Agent still has read/write access to the network share. The old snapshot files are there are there and nothing else. That is what I was expecting.

When I reinitialized, I did flag for a new snapshot to be created. I've also tried running the snapshot several times after that with the same results as above.

Locking contentions. There appear to be a HUGE number of locks against this process 2.5 million after 15 minutes of operation (holy crap!) mostly against the MSmerge_past_partition_mappings table. I think you may have located the problem, but I'm not sure what to do from here!
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RickD
Slow But Sure Yak Herding Master

3608 Posts

Posted - 2011-05-04 : 11:16:40
You may need to increase the timeout. To do this, create a new agent profile with a long timeout value (just make it as long as you think sounds sensible. It sounds like you have a large table and this is not replying fast enough to SQL, therefore getting the timeout message.
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