Replication Monitoring

What would be a best practice for monitoring Replication?
I have Transactional Replication going from the Production database (SQL00) to the Reporting database (SQL03).
Are there some Alerts I need to make sure I have setup to notify me?
Should I do a Validate Subscription once a week or so?
What would you do to have peace of mind that your reporting database is exactly in sync with your production database?
Thanx!
This depends on the stability of your links. If you are well connected, i.e. have highly reliable links set up the replication alerts to alert you when your job fails.
If your links are somewhat unstable set up the replication alerts to alert you when a job fails, but make sure you click on the response tab, and set a threshold to be alerted at, i.e. once per day, hour, etc.
You can schedule validations using sp_publication_validation. Use this proc in conjunction with the Replication: Subscriber has failed data validation alert.
How frequently you wish to run a validation depends on what you are doing. In general with a read only subscriber I never feel the need to run one. Your comfort level (or your bosses') might vary from mine.
With an updateable subscriber (immediate, queued, or merge) you might feel the need to run validations more often.
Hilary Cotter
Looking for a book on SQL Server replication?
http://www.nwsu.com/0974973602.html
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What would be a best practice for monitoring Replication?
I have Transactional Replication going from the Production database (SQL00) to the Reporting database (SQL03).
Are there some Alerts I need to make sure I have setup to notify me?
Should I do a Validate Subscription once a week or so?
What would you do to have peace of mind that your reporting database is exactly in sync with your production database?
Thanx!