Testing out replication: Two nodes on one box

One thing that is important with replication I feel, is the ability to set it up and have a play. This is the BEST way to learn about all the nuances and magic within this architecture. Things rarely go straight forward with a setup, and I think the pain of going through it only gives you a great wealth of experience when you come out of it the other side

When I first started to have a play, I wanted to make sure that any problems I encountered were elimitated down to SQL server only and not network, permissions or other such red herrings. So I decided to set up 2 instances on one server. Ie an developer edition installation as normal, and then another 'named install' called NODE2 for instance. Then I can replicate back and forth on the same box. This I found very useful to learn. You can set up a named instance by running the normal sqlserver install again, but choose to create 'named instance' along the way during the install wizard.

However, later on I had trouble connecting to NODE2 from client tools on another box, while I could connect to the default instance fine. After much digging I came accross this artice, I recommend it as it helped solve the problem.

http://martinsantics.blogspot.com/2009/09/running-multiple-instances-of-sql.html

Replicating from one node to another is now my standard way to test replication, I recommend it before you start getting multiple servers involved and to get your confidence up.