Improving Availability and enhancing Programmability - Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Administration - page 234

10. Now, we are at a point where we can create a subscription that defines which
publication will be received. The type of subscriptions can be push or pull.
11. The merge agent or distrbution agent on the distributor is responsible for the
push subscription and the agent run at the subscribers is responsible for the pull
subscription.
12. Again using the SSMS tool, create the subscription with information such as name
of publication, name of subscriber and subscription database, service accounts
for distributor agent or agents, and choose the schedule method as continuous,
scheduled basis, or on-demand only.
13. To create a push subscription from the publisher, on SSMS connect to the Publisher
and expand the replication folder | Local Publications folder. Right-click on
publication to create one or more subscriptions and click New Subcription to
complete the wizard.
14. To create the pull subscription from the Subscriber, connect to the subscriber from
the SSMS tool and expand the Replication folder. Right-click on Local Subscription
| New Subscriptions | Publication page. Select <Find SQL Server Publisher>
or <Find relevant Publisher> from the publisher drop-down list. Connect to the
Publisher in the Connect to Server dialog box to select the Publication and then
complete the pages in the New Subscription wizard.
15. Now, we need to initialize the created subscriptions, so that the copy of schema from
each article is replicated in addition to the initial dataset.
16. On the publisher, using SSMS, expand the Replication folder | Local Publications
folder. Right-click the publication to create a snapshot | View Snapshot Agent
Status | <Publication>, then click Start.
17. Repeat these steps on multiple subscribers to ensure the process is scaled out.
How it works...
By default the replication uses the internal process in publishing the data as per the
components that include publisher, subscribers, publications, articles, and subscriptions.
The default initialization method uses a full snapshot, which includes the schema along
with replication objects when the SQL Agent service is up and running. During the snapshot
initialization, we can choose the data to publish without a full snapshot.