Seed a consumer instance
- UpdatedJul 31, 2025
- 3 minutes to read
- Zurich
- Instance Data Replication
Seed all or some of the tables in your Instance Data Replication (IDR) replication sets depending on the needs of your consumer instance.
Before you begin
About this task
Seeding replicates existing records from the producer instance to the consumer instance. You can initiate seeding requests on a consumer instance while you are activating a consumer replication set. Seeding options are not available in bi-directional or discrete replication sets by design.
You can select either full seeding or partial seeding.
- Full seeding replicates all existing records from a table in the producer instance. Perform a full seeding when you want to replicate all existing records.
- Partial seeding enables you to filter and replicate specific records from the producer. Perform a partial seeding when you want to replicate only some of the records from the producer.
The producer instance handles one seeding request at a time. When the producer instance is busy with a seeding request, subsequent seeding requests are queued and initiated in the order that they are received.
- Records that exist on the producer instance and not on the consumer instance are copied to the consumer instance.
- If the sys_id on the producer matches an existing record on the consumer instance, the entire record on the consumer instance is updated to match the producer.
- The sys_id of the record identifies the record on both instances. If you use the custom coalesce option, the field you select is used to coalesce records in both instances.
- If a replication set changes and no longer includes a table, IDR does not alter the records in the corresponding table on the consumer instances.
- The maximum record size is 10 MB.
- The maximum seeding size is 3 million records.Note: If your replication set contains more than 3 million records, seeding cannot start. To fix this situation, break the replication set into multiple replication sets with fewer records in each or use partial seeding.
- The maximum seeding time is 7 days.
Note: Seeding is not a replacement for cloning. Do not use IDR to clone instances.
Procedure
Result
If you encounter an
error during seeding, see Fix seeding errors.
- Seeding continues even if errors occur on some consumer tables. You can restart seeding specifically on the tables that have errors or on all tables in a replication set.
- The maximum for a retry reseeding request is 10,000 errors. If you have more errors, perform a full seeding.