SQL Server 2008 Replication: Snap Shot Agent timing out on a specific table

Hi all,

I am going through the process of setting up a transactional replication on my set up. However, I am unable to generate a full snap shot of my database. I keep getting stuck at the same particular point of the process.

From snapshot agent:

[46%] The process is running and is waiting for a response from the server

Other sources have mentioned increasing the timeout period but I do not think this is the problem as this occurs at around the 10 min mark, way within the default value of 1800s.

So, I removed that article/table from the snapshot, and lo and behold, it works.

So I was looking at the Schema of the table and in my identity column, the NOT FOR REPLICATION was set to TRUE. All my other tables have it set to FALSE. Could this be the source of the error?

Also, I tried changing this to false via the GUI but got received a timeout error. Is there a script that allows me to change this?

Thanks all.

From serverfault Nai

• How big is the article that is causing the issue? A snapshot taking over 10 minutes isn't that unusual if the table is very large. How long have you let it run?

  I don't think the identity column issue would effect the time it take to snapshot the article - it would have more effect on distribution. If you do want to change it, write a script (or generate one from the GUI) to do it, as the GUI will only allow 30 secs to make the change.

  From Brian Knight