Replication Monitor enhancements in SQL Server 2008
Replication Monitor is an useful tool that gives information about publisher view of all replication activity including status information for publications and subscriptions.
When you load the replication monitor by default it will display warnings only for uninitialized subscriptions, you need to enable warnings for other conditions that are applicable to your replication setup topology, so that you are informed about status and performance in a timely manner. So let us go into bit details on what's new within SQL 2008 version for Replication Monitor alone!
The usability improvements within Replication Monitor is more useful to the users in specific if they are looking to manage their SQL Replication environment effectively:
- In most Replication Monitor grids, you can now do the following: select which columns to view; sort by multiple columns; and filter rows in the grid based on column values.
To access this functionality: right-click a grid, and then select Choose Columns to Show, Sort, Filter, or Clear Filter. Filter settings are specific to each grid. Column selection and sorting are applied to all grids of the same type, such as the publications grid for each Publisher.
- The Common Jobs tab for the Publisher node has been renamed to Agents. The Agents tab now provides a centralized location to view information about all the agents and jobs that are associated with publications at the selected Publisher. Agents and jobs that are associated with publications include the following:
- The Snapshot Agent, which is used by all publications.
- The Log Reader Agent, which is used by all transactional publications.
- The Queue Reader Agent, which is used by transactional publications that are enabled for queued updating subscriptions.
- Maintenance jobs, which are used by all publications.
The Distribution Agent and Merge Agent are associated with subscriptions to publications.
- The Warnings and Agents tab for the publication node has been split into separate Warnings and Agents tabs. Splitting the tabs emphasizes the difference between administering performance warnings, and monitoring replication agents. The Agents tab refreshes automatically, but the Warnings tab does not.
When it comes to troubleshooting the replication activity this Replication Monitor helps you to get data from the agent history and output from current agent sessions can both provide valuable troubleshooting information. It has three tabs with the list of information about each agent such as - Snapshot agent, Log reader agent and Queue reader agent, that comes for Publications. How about for Subscriptions? The agents such as - Distribution agent & Merge agent are important for the subscriptions.
When we talk about Replication, Transacitonal replicaton is more used within any SQL environment and replication monitor allows to measure the latency in a system by inserting a token (a small amount of data) in the transaction log of the publication database and recording how long it takes to arrive at the Distributor and Subscribers. The token also allows you to identify if data is not reaching the Distributor or Subscriber. Also the newer features in Replication within SQL Server 2008 are very useful for Merge replication synchronization status, such as it displays detailed statistics for each article processed during synchronization, including the amount of time spent in each processing phase (uploading changes, downloading changes, and so on). It can help pinpoint specific tables that are causing slow downs and is the best place to troubleshoot performance issues with merge subscriptions
Hope you are able to make the best use of Replication Monitor when you have a problem within your Replication instances.