SQL server replication, subscription to remote server : issue while choosing the publisher

Question

I am trying to create a subscription to a remote server having SQL 2008 R2

the client PC is connected through VPN to the server and can discover it successfully.

I can even connect to the database through SSMS with no issues, after having fixed the hosts file to translate the server name into its public IP address. I am using SQL Authentication to avoid cross domain issues. Both machines are not on a domain.

The problem is when I want to add a new subscription and choose a publisher, I cannot as it requires the actual server name.

I tried some workarounds like using an Alias and using that but still didn't work

Is there any way around this ?

Answer 1

Not sure if this will solve it, but try adding an entry into the client PC's hosts file:

# replace values here with IP of server, name of server
192.168.1.101   db-server-name

Then you can try using the server name, "db-server-name", when adding a new subscription.