Distribution Agent - Replication Monitor warning

Hi,

I am replicating a large table with a number of indexes. During the initialisation phase (creating the indexes at the subscriber), I am seing the following error/warning in Replication monitor. When the initialisation is complete the error warnings dissapear.

The replication agent has not logged a progress message in 10 minutes. This might indicate an unresponsive agent or high system activity. Verify that records are being replicated to the destination and that connections to the Subscriber, Publisher, and Distributor are still active.

Is there a way to increase the 10 minute time-limit?

Thanks,
Priyanga

Hi Priyanga,

You can use the -KeepAliveMessage parameter of the distribution agent to specify a larger time interval for logging the "agent suspect" messages. However, I am a bit hesitant to recommend that you simply increase the time interval in general since you would probably want to be notified that the distribution agent may be stalled in a more timely manner when it is delivering incremental changes. On the other hand, delivery of snapshot is arguably a rare enough occurrence that the "agent suspect" messages should not become a significant source of annoyance.

In truth, the following factors had conspired to make the "agent suspect" messages almost unavoidable when delivering a large snapshot:

1) BCP API does not allow the distribution agent to log a progress message until every "BcpBatchSize" number of rows have been bulk-loaded into a subscriber table
2) We use a large "BcpBatchSize" (2^31 - delta) as the default "BcpBatchSize" in SQL2005 so the distribution agent can more readily meet the minimally-logged bulk-load requirements.
3) The time required to create an index on a large table probably exceeds the default -KeepAliveMessageInterval

Based on 1) and 2) above, distribution agent will mostly not be able to log a progress message in-between a bulk-load operation;and if the amount of data that needs to be bulk-loaded is large, the distribution agent will likely not be able to finish the bulk-load operation within the default -KeepAliveMessageInterval.

HTH

-Raymond