My requirement of synchronising two DB servers in different geographic locations is as follows
- synchronise some DBs on 2 servers in regular intervals (manual). One in US is an intermediate release server and we need those updated DBs on our local server every time a new build is deployed.
- DBs are huge (not very huge though, more or less 30 GB)
- Minimum possible action/disturbance on Source server while synchronising
Currently IT team here downloads the compressed database files from server at US to local server to get the latest updated DBs, which takes huge time for SOME of the DBs.
My question is: Would SQL Replication prove to be a FASTER option in this case?
DBs that take much time have only master look up tables but with huge data, which are updated less frequently. But we need to include these DBs as well, so as to keep the process clean and synchronised.
It seems, I cannot use Transactional Replication as not all tables have primary key here. Initially I thought,once replication is set-up, transactional replication anyways runs snapshot first (which would be a one time activity, so its okay even if it takes time) and replicating only the transactions later would not take much time. Hence, it would save heavy downloads every time.
But, if Snapshot replication is the only option left, I am wondering would it even save time over downloading MDFs,as what I understood till now is that snapshot replication will create a complete snapshot of DB everytime and apply them in batches.
I am not a DBA but a developer, and I was thinking by any chance if I can do something to speed-up current process. First thing I could think of, was replication. I have set-up a snapshot replication for a 30 GB DB which has replicated only 1.5 Gb of data in 2 hours. Please suggest.