All downstream servers failing to synchronise.

Hi guys,

I have a central WSUS server with 21 downstream replicas. My main central server is replicating with MS correctly, but none of my downstream servers are synchronising correctly with my WSUS server. They all fail with the error below.

SqlException: Timeout expired.  The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding.
at Microsoft.UpdateServices.DatabaseAccess.DBConnection.DrainObsoleteConnections(SqlException e)
   at Microsoft.UpdateServices.DatabaseAccess.DBConnection.ExecuteReader()
   at Microsoft.UpdateServices.Internal.DataAccess.HideUpdatesForReplicaSync(String xmlUpdateIds)
   at Microsoft.UpdateServices.ServerSync.CatalogSyncAgentCore.ProcessHiddenUpdates(Guid[] hiddenUpdates)
   at Microsoft.UpdateServices.ServerSync.CatalogSyncAgentCore.ReplicaSync()
   at Microsoft.UpdateServices.ServerSync.CatalogSyncAgentCore.ExecuteSyncProtocol(Boolean allowRedirect)

When they synchronise, I can see that they download all the updates, but they appear to be having problems synchronising the database. The symptoms seem to be exactly as describedhere. I have run the temporary fix on a downstream server and can get that to synchronise correctly the once, then it goes back to failing.

If I query my DB for the number of hidden updates, it's around 49K. I am ghappy to run the permanent fix on my DBs if this is the recommended way of fixing the issue. If not, what should I do. I don't fancy installing SSMS on all my downstream servers to run the permanent fix.

My current setup on my central server is WSUS 3.0 SP2 with the files stored on a local filesystem and the DB on an SQL 2005 cluster. My downstream servers all run WSUS 3.0 SP2 with the DB on Windows Internal Database.