Hi all,

I'm evaluating Replistor and have started working through these forums to see if I can get some advice from people with practicle experience. I am using version 6.2.

Questions:
1. Does replication of SQL 2000 work? I've read about support for 2005 with the new module which ensures a consistent database. My support engineer said that this is not the case with SQL 2000. What is the practical experience? Has anyone had a problem with inconsistent databases that were unusable? Do you replicated the .mdf and .ldf? Or just the .mdf?

2. I am using a many to one configuration to consolidate my backup data and to feed into my DR scenario. My plan is to replication many machines to a single machine with large amounts of disk. From a disk space scenario I am fine. I have a large volume which currently is layed out like d:\server1; d:\server2; d:\server3, etc ...

This leads to my next question about snapshots:
3. In each of the specifications I am requesting a snapshot hourly. Since the snapshot is on the volume of my target, each snapshot request will create a snapshot for the entire d: volume, not just the files in the individual specification. How are folks handling snapshots like this. I want to use snapshots to create a shorterm nearline recovery pool.

4. The SQL2005 support needs the snapshot to be part of the specification because it interacts with VSS on the source to place the marker inside the replication stream headed towards the target. This seems to cause a problem as outlined in Question 3.

I am not doing any Failover or HA stuff at the moment. This is primarily a backup consolidation with some DR mixed in.

Thanks in advance for any comments or suggestions.

Chuck