Blocking in distribution database...

Hello...
I am noticing that everytime the the Agent history clean
up job runs... it causes contention and blocking in the
distribution database.
Has anyone come across this? If so, how did you resolve
this. I am using SQL Server 2000 and every server in my
topology uses SQL Server 2000 as well.
Please advise...
Thanks,
Brett
are you running datamirror? Datamirror does not clean up efficiently.
Blocking in the distribution database is caused by 2 factors
1) too many push agents running simultaneously. Try to stagger and schedule
them. If you can migrate to pull subscriptions.
2) too much replication metadata pooling in your distribution database due
to subscribers who are frequently off line. If you are using anonymous
subscribers this exacerbates the problem. Consider using named subscribers.
"Brett" <anonymous@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:1ae2001c41e7a$fc3ac590$a101280a@.phx.gbl...
> Hello...
> I am noticing that everytime the the Agent history clean
> up job runs... it causes contention and blocking in the
> distribution database.
> Has anyone come across this? If so, how did you resolve
> this. I am using SQL Server 2000 and every server in my
> topology uses SQL Server 2000 as well.
> Please advise...
> Thanks,
> Brett
>

Blocking in Distribution Database

I noticed that the distribution agents are blocking themselves in the
distribution database.
It looks like this when i do a sp_who2 spid/blocked By:
80/Not blocked
80/80
80/80
80/80
80/80
Is this normal?
Probably not. Check to see what the process is doing which is doing the
blocking and being blocked. You may need to use DBCC inputbuffer(spid) to do
this. You will get locking when some of the replication agents are running,
and even EM will cause locking. It is also possible that if your server is
really under substaintial load the log reader and distribution agents will
lock themselves.
Hilary Cotter
Director of Text Mining and Database Strategy
RelevantNOISE.Com - Dedicated to mining blogs for business intelligence.
This posting is my own and doesn't necessarily represent RelevantNoise's
positions, strategies or opinions.
Looking for a SQL Server replication book?
http://www.nwsu.com/0974973602.html
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http://www.indexserverfaq.com
"Jeff B" <JeffB@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:B25E48D1-6AC8-4D59-892C-AA7E92D7A95A@.microsoft.com...
>I noticed that the distribution agents are blocking themselves in the
> distribution database.
> It looks like this when i do a sp_who2 spid/blocked By:
> 80/Not blocked
> 80/80
> 80/80
> 80/80
> 80/80
> Is this normal?