Best way to move the distribution and subscriber to another server

Question

What is the best way to move the distribution and subscriber role to a different server for transactional replication?
Stop activity on the publisher then script out the drop and create and point to the new ones?
The publisher will remain the same server.
Thank you!
Paula

Answer 1

Hi Paula,
According to your description, you want to move distribution database and subscription database to a different server.
Firstly, to move distribution database without dropping and recreating the replication topology, you could follow the steps in the
article . However, the best way I recommend is to remove the replication, create the distribution on the new server, and recreate publication and subscription.
To make this process simple, you could use SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) to generate scripts and run the scripts to recreate publications and subscriptions or drop publications and subscriptions as the screenshot below. Checking ‘To create or enable
the components’ generates the script for creating the publications and subscriptions, and Checking ‘To drop or disable the components’ generates the script for dropping the publications and subscriptions.
Firstly, please use SSMS to generate the script which is used to create publications and subscriptions.
1.Connect to Publisher, or Subscriber in SSMS, and then expand the server node.
2.Right-click the Replication folder, and then click Generate Scripts.
3.In the Generate SQL Script dialog box, check ‘To create or enable the components’.
4.Click Script to File.
5.Enter a file name in the Script File Location dialog box, and then click Save. A status message is displayed.
6.Click OK, and then click Close. For more information about the process, please refer to the article:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms152483.aspx.
Secondly, follow the steps above, check ‘To drop or disable the components’ to generate the script used to drop publications and subscriptions. Then run the script to drop publications and subscriptions.
Thirdly, please disable distribution using Transact-SQL or SSMS following the steps in the article:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms152757(v=sql.105).aspx.
Fourthly, please create the distribution at the new server using Transact-SQL or SSMS following the steps in the article:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms151192.aspx#TsqlProcedure.
Last, please run the script generated in the first step to recreate publications and subscriptions.
Regards,
Michelle Li
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