What I’m talking about is server groups. I’ll admit I missed this the first few times through, but it can offer a significant boost when managing replication. Enterprise Manager gives you the ability to register multiple SQL Servers to manage from a single console. These servers can be placed in logical groups that you define. This collection of servers can then be used in the replication set up to define a group of servers to subscribe to a publication.

Select the Next button to display Figure 14-35.

Specifying a server or server group to subscribe.

You’ll notice that there is only a choice of one server on this list. This is because I have not enabled any others and I have also only registered one server. Using the server groups in your subscription set up is not magic and does not restrict your activities. It is simply a shortcut. Inside the Wizard, you can select multiple servers to subscribe. If you select a group instead of an individual server, the wizard simply highlights all of the servers under that group. This is a static assignment and adding another server to that group does not automatically subscribe it to a publication.

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