Remote Distributor and Subscriber on same machine - is that OK?

Hi,

Server A houses the Production DB which services an OLTP system. Transactional replication is configured on this server which has two subscribers - on two separate servers (servers B and C). The Distribution database currently resides on Server A (which is also the Publisher).

Server B is on the same LAN as Server A (on the same rack). I'm considering moving the Distribution database from Server A to Server B to offload some of the processing overhead from Server A.

Are there any gotchas/performance problems associated with having the Distribution database (remote distributor) and the Subscriber on the same server (server B) in a transaction replication topology?

Please advise or point me to the appropriate documentation - I haven't found anything that addresses this specific question...thanks in advance,

Smitha

This is actually a rather popular configuration (at least the ones that I have seen) inside Microsoft as this allows you to upgrade the Distributor and Subscriber to a new release together and then use the Subscriber as a test bed for the new release while receiving continuous updates from the production system. You do need good network connectivity between the publisher and the distributor\subscriber as pulling snapshot data (or backup\restore for that matter) can easily saturate a 100Mbit Ethernet connection. So to minimize impact on the production system, you may want to get a dedicated connection between the two.

-Raymond

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Thanks Raymond. I shouldn't have to worry about the snapshot/backup+restore because I've used this second server as the backup files' location in the past (and still perform copy-only FULL production DB backups to this server). The restore takes a while since it reads from and writes to the same drive but this is OK for an operation that may happen 2-3 times a year.

Thanks again,

Smitha