We are using SQL 2014 transaction replication to replicate a huge table, about 6 billion records. I created a publication just for this article on a sql 2014 publisher server and the subscription is on a different sql 2012 server. The distribution db is also a sql 2014 server on a separate server. Once I started the initial snapshot which was successful, synchronization started and ended in about 8 hours. Everything looks fine and no errors but the subscription db only has a little bit over 2 billion records, 2147473647 in the table. I thought I did something wrong so I dropped the subscription and article and did the whole thing again.... again same result, 2147473647 in subscriber db. When I look at the number closely, 2147473647 is almost the same number as the integer max limit. I am wondering if I am hitting some limit or having some setting incorrectly.
Normally for this kind of big table, I use the 'initialize with backup' method but the problem is that my subscriber server is a sql 2012 server. And I can't upgrade it to sql 2014.
Any help on this is very much appreciated.
OD
Ocean Deep