I am trying to consider all the options before setting up transactional replication on my 2008R2 server to 2012 distribution server to 2012 Subscriber server. All the three servers are on FULL recovery mode. Log backup is taken every 15 minutes and full backup is taken daily everyday on all the three server databases used in replication. We want to use the subscriber as a reporting server. Publisher is our main OLTP database
I have created domain accounts which are given appropriate permissions on the shared snapshot folder on the distributor. I have also give the unc path of this folder when setting up distributor and then granted db_owner rights to all the three sql logis created using these domain accounts to the distributor db on distributor server, and to all other dbs on publihser (dbs which will be replicated).
The snapshots were getting replicated to the shared folder on distributor very nicely when i tested the setup in uat servers. I had to install an updated version of SSMS (11.XX) on UAT publisher for the replication to work.
But then I decided not to update SSMS in my production server as someone suggested that since the servers are very old, they should not be changed for any setting, so I tried to use the SSMS of my distributor server and connect back to the publisher from distributor server. But then everything stopped working.
The distribution was created successfully on the distributor server. The publisher was also created successfully (using distributor SSMS). But the snapshot agent never started.
I then tried my previous setup (Uat setup - where I used updated SSMS on uat publisher server), that also did not work, the snapshot agent does not start - it eventualy fails after 10 minutes with the following error"
It says Steps2 failed. The password of the account repl_snapshot and repl_logreader has expired after 10 failed attempts the sql agent job fails
Please help :(
I tested all of this in test servers and it was working very well. Now suddenly the snapshot agent is failing only. I have changed the shared folder locations - by changing the name of the folder and re-granting the rights to all the domain users, also tried to setup distribution server and publisher server many many times. but noting is working, I have entered passwords correctly at every steps. Also granted the domain account sql logins the dbowner permissions to the required databases (distribution database on distribution server, and other replication databases also on publisher server)
The snapshot agent is failing even with the previous setup (using updated SSMS on the UAT publisher server). And it is failing when i use the Distributor's SSMS to login and connec tto publisher server. The error is same in both the cases
Adding more screenshots from my sql agent jobs when snapshot agent is started
And getting this error after snapshot agent finishes execution Unable to start execution of step 2 (reason: Error authenticating proxy DOMAIN\repl_snapshot, system error: The password for this account has expired.). NOTE: The step was retried the requested number of times (10) without succeeding. The step fail
