SQL - transaction replication

Question

Hi,

We are running SQL 2016 SP2 and i am trying to setup transaction replication for HA (and to create a read-only secondary for backups and such).

I am testing this on 2 isolated servers in azure, i have recovered a backup of the DB and configured replication to a secondary server.
server1 runs the DB and the distribution DB and the publication
server2 runs the subscriber.

all this appears to work, however, the snapshot agent runs every few hours taking 2-4 hours to run.
we want the replica to be a near realtime replica of the primary but at the moment i think we will be lucky if its 4 hours out.
and right now its running on a static DB, there are no apps/connections to this test environemt so if i configure this on the actual production DB i just dont see this as a viable option.

The DB in questions is about 1.5TB with a few hundred tables
we currently are running log shipping which does work but there is a preference to use transaction replication instead.

would appreciate any help/advice/thoughts on this.

Thanks

Answer 1

Hi @Colm ,

Snapshot replication is most appropriate when data changes are substantial but infrequent and does not montior updates to the data

If you want to real time, transaction replication is a good choice
In the best case, transactional replication can be near real-time, changes that occur in the pubilsher are delivered to the subscriber as they happen(in near real-time), in addition to several factors, such as network and workload can have an impact on latency, of course, the latency you also can measure:https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/replication/monitor/measure-latency-and-validate-connections-for-transactional-replication?redirectedfrom=MSDN&view=sql-server-ver16

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Answer 2

hi,
there should be no latency as the 2 servers replicating are in the same VNET and subnet in Azure.
there are no changes happening on the DB, which is why i dont understand the snapshot agent running for 2-4 hours every 2-4 hours.
if this is how it works, theres no way i could use this for a realtime replica.

Thanks