Setting Subscribers before configuring Replication

After a one week 2072 session given to IT guys of Citibank Istanbul, I want to write some of my observations during replication labs. The most forgotten part while configuring replication was setting subscribers before using the wizard.

To do this, right click your publisher/distributer server > Properties > Replication TAB > Configure > Subscribers TAB > check the subscriber server.

Also, service pack is an important issue in order to successfully configure the replication. Be sure that you applied the same service pack to all publishers and subscribers. To check this, simply execute

SELECT @@VERSION and SELECT SERVERPROPERTY('ProductLevel') statements and verify that the output is the same for all servers.

Replication: Publication Error

While I was trying to create a publication with the Create Publication Wizard, I came up with an error simply saying that the server was invalid. (Error: 14234) The problem was due to the difference of the registered server name and the actual servername, which can be gathered by executing the command 'select @@servername'.
In order to set the registered name to the actual name, I had to run the following command:
dropserver @@servername
go
addserver 'actualServerName', local
go

Logshipping

I wanted to share my experiences just after configuring on a single server with two instances. I used to have problems with logshipping at the phase of restore job on the standby instance. The problem was service account of SQL Server Agent running on the standby server. In order to provide a good and clear demonstration, I set up two instances on a single server rather than setting up two distinct servers with one instance on each. Doing so, I was able to overcome the difficulties and problems due to permissions related with SQL Server Agent. Simply, both agent services were running with local system account. So, it worked! That way, I was also able to prevent the need of installing an additional server or a domain.