I recently got a customer call where the SQL 2008 Snapshot Agent appeared to hang when started from SSMS.
As you can see, pop-up status window shows “Starting agent”. So, looks like its running, but it stays this way forever. Replication Monitor also shows as “Running”.
If I double-click the I can zoom in on Agent details, however all I get is message the makes it sound like the Agent is busy, or maybe hung, but I’m not sure. So, how can I tell what the Snapshot Agent is doing without all the high-layer status tools getting in the way.Answer, since the Snapshot Agent is just Windows executable (…100\com\snapshot.exe), I can run it outside of SSMS but starting it from a Windows CMD-line, yes, we still use CMD prompt for troubleshooting. Here is what I did. Read more: REPLTalk covers Using and Tuning SQL Replication
As you can see, pop-up status window shows “Starting agent”. So, looks like its running, but it stays this way forever. Replication Monitor also shows as “Running”.
If I double-click the I can zoom in on Agent details, however all I get is message the makes it sound like the Agent is busy, or maybe hung, but I’m not sure. So, how can I tell what the Snapshot Agent is doing without all the high-layer status tools getting in the way.Answer, since the Snapshot Agent is just Windows executable (…100\com\snapshot.exe), I can run it outside of SSMS but starting it from a Windows CMD-line, yes, we still use CMD prompt for troubleshooting. Here is what I did. Read more: REPLTalk covers Using and Tuning SQL Replication