Synchronizing databases

Analysis Services database synchronization is a very useful feature that allows the database administrator to copy database files from the source to target SSAS instance. Synchronization is always incremental; it only copies the files that are different on the source instance as compared to the same files on the target instance. This enables the administrator to ensure that the source and target instance have the same data with minimal effort. Because synchronization is incremental, it could be much faster than collecting the backup and restoring the full database to the target instance.

Synchronization always works in the pull mode—the command is executed on the target instance. Synchronization is also single threaded, which means that it only copies one file at a time and there is no way to force copying multiple files in parallel. This normally isn't an issue for dimension files because these tend to be relatively small. However, partition data and aggregation files...