The health of Active Roles replication heavily depends on the access permissions that the Administration Service and SQL Server Agent has on SQL Server. The required permissions are listed in the “SQL Server permissions” section in the Active Roles Quick Start Guide.
To ensure that SQL Server is properly configured for Administration Service replication, ensure that the SQL Server Agent service is started and configured properly.
The SQL Server Agent service must be up and running on SQL Server that holds the role of the Publisher database server (Publisher SQL Server). It is recommended that the startup type for this service be set to Automatic.
The SQL Server Agent service should be configured to log on with a domain user account. The service logon account must have sufficient rights to connect to the Publisher SQL Server and to the Subscriber SQL Server (see “Replication agent permissions” in the Active Roles Quick Start Guide).
Active Roles uses the replication functionality of Microsoft SQL Server to copy and distribute configuration data from one Administration Service database to another, and to synchronize data among the databases for consistency.
Administration Service database servers synchronized by using the SQL Server replication function are referred to as replication partners. Each replication partner maintains a writable copy of the Service’s configuration and Management history data. Whenever changes are made to one replication partner, the changes are propagated to the other replication partners.
The Publisher and its Subscribers constitute a replication group. Every replication group must include a single Publisher and may include any number of Subscribers. The members of a replication group are referred to as replication partners.
Each member of a replication groups (replication partner) maintains a separate, writable copy of the Administration Service’s configuration and management history data. Replication copies and distributes data from one member database to another, and synchronizes data between the databases for consistency. When changes are made on the Publisher, the Publisher replicates these changes to each Subscriber. When data changes are made on a Subscriber, the Subscriber propagates the changes to the Publisher, which in turn replicates them to the other Subscribers.
This replication process ensures the same configuration for all Administration Services that use the database servers belonging to the replication group.
When initially set up, the Administration Service database server is configured as a standalone database, that is, it does not have replication partners and does not belong to any replication group. The Administration Service that uses a standalone database server is referred to as standalone Administration Service.
It is possible to add a standalone database server to any replication group that already exists. When you do that, the database server becomes a Subscriber. Each Administration Service database server may belong to only one replication group. Once removed from a replication group, it can be added to a different group.
To create a new replication group, a standalone database server must be designated as the Publisher. The new replication group will then have a single member—the Publisher. Later, you may add Subscribers to the group.
If there are any replication failures in Active Roles, the Active Roles console provides a visual indication of this issue by modifying the icon of the Server Configuration and Configuration Databases containers in the console tree: a label with the exclamation point appears next to each of the containers. This allows the administrator to detect a replication failure without examining individual replication partners.