Transactional Data Replication, SQL Server version compatibility

Question

I've been following the Microsoft Tutorial: Configure replication between two fully connected servers (transactional). Everything has gone "smooth", however the 'New Subscription Wizard' is stopping me from creating a subscriber due to compatibility issues between the publisher and subscriber.

Error Message

The selected Subscriber does not satisfy the minimum version compatibility level of the selected publication. (New Subscription Wizard)

Versions

The publisher and distributor are on:

Microsoft SQL Server 2014 - 12.0.4100.1 (X64) Apr 20 2015 17:29:27 Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation Standard Edition (64-bit) on Windows NT 6.3 (Build 9600: ) (Hypervisor)

The subscriber is on:

Microsoft SQL Server 2016 (RTM) - 13.0.1601.5 (X64) Apr 29 2016 23:23:58 Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation Standard Edition (64-bit) on Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard 6.3 (Build 9600: ) (Hypervisor)

Transactional Replication

The type of data replication I'm attempting to configure is Transactional and according to the Microsoft documentation for Replication Backward Compatibility, this should be working fine, but for some reason, the wizard is not playing ball.

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

I found a way.

Turns out, if your subscriber is a higher SQL version than the publisher this error will always get produced. A way around this is to add the subscription on the Subscriber instance instead of on the Publisher.

Answer 2

For me the solution was to use a newer version of SQL Management Studio. My Scenario is: Distributor on SQL Server 2017 pushes to 2019er subscriber. Subscription could not be created with version 17.9.1 but with 18.10 of the SQL Management Studio.

Regards Benny