Thursday, August 26, 2010

SQL Replication Agent will RETRY for 4085 Years

Have you noticed the SQL Server Agent Job RETRY  is set to 2147?  Well it is not, the dialog window just cuts off the rest of the digits.
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Actually the Replication Agent are set by default to retry 2147483647 times, once every minute.  That is over 4000 years!
2147483647 = 35791394 Hours = 1491308 Days = 4085 Years.
How does this impact Replication?
Should a Replication Agent fail and the agent be configured for “continuous”, then agent will not report back to SQL Agent Service, but will wait 1 minute, then try again for 4000 years.  Any ALTERTS placed with SQL Agent for “job failure” will not get called.
Read more: REPLTalk covers Using and Tuning SQL Replication