Question: I have two subscriptions configured and one of them is not working, what should I check?

Answer:We should check if the distribution agent is running, and check if there are any errors reported. If required try to reinitialize subscription and use replication monitor to watch what is happening.

Question: I get the following error: Insert failed because of conflict with identity range check constraint. How do I solve it?

Answer: We should be careful when we use Identity with replication. Ideally we should manually assign the range at both the ends — Publisher and Subscriber — if we are using updatable subscription. Also, it is to be noted that Identity keys and triggers should be marked as Not for Replication.

Question: OLEDB provider "SQLNCLI" for linked server "XXXX" returned message as No transaction is alive (.Net SqlClientData provider).

Answer: We need to make sure that we have configured SQL Server Agent to run using domain account and not "local system" or "network services" account, as this account would have different SID on each machine and they would not be able to access common network resources.

Question: Sometime I see an error "Subscription(s) have been marked as inactive and must be reinitialized, NoSync subscriptions will need to be dropped and recreated". How do I solve it?

Answer: In most cases, re-intializing will work, and if not, query the system table Mssubscriptions and note down the record for which status = 0. If you find such an entry, execute a code mentioned here:

update distribution..MSsubscriptions set status = 2 where publisher_id = 'VALUE'
and
publisher_db = 'SSCitationSR'
and
publication_id = 'VALUE'
and
subscriber_id = 'VALUE'
and
subscriber_db = 'DB_NAME'

Question: I get the following error message: Log Reader Agent failed to construct a replicated command from Log Sequence Number (LSN). How do I resolve it?

Answer:Query the sysarticles table at the Publisher server and note down the name of the article if it shows value missing in the column filter. Note down the article name, remove it from the publication, and then re-add them. Once you re-add them, re-initialize the snapshot and it should work fine.