Sitecore 6.6 publishing to multiple targets

Question

Currently working on a sitecore solution which is running version 6.6 and we're experiencing some odd behavior. The site is setup to have multiple targets which are all pointing to individual databases for a webserver for instance web1 - web3 etc... I can confirm that all connection strings are correct and that the web servers are able to communicate to/from the sitecore cms server.

With a lot of reading I found out about the EnableEventQueues (http://www.sitecore.net/learn/blogs/technical-blogs/getting-to-know-sitecore/posts/2010/07/introducing-the-sitecore-event-queue.aspx) which in theory should have resolve this problem, however having enabled this on all web nodes and the cms server it's still experiencing issues.

Our other theory was to recycle an app pool to check if sitecore had cached old content and was waiting on a period to update its cache? However this seemed to fail but pointing the connection string to a working on then worked, so it was like sitecore had only published the changed to a select few nodes.

We're currently at a stand still as to what could be causing this, unless there's any other configs which require enabling?

The ScalabilitySettings.config looks like:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <settings>

      <setting name="EnableEventQueues">
        <patch:attribute name="value">true</patch:attribute>
      </setting>

      <setting name="InstanceName">
        <patch:attribute name="value"></patch:attribute>
      </setting>

      <setting name="Publishing.PublishingInstance">
        <patch:attribute name="value"></patch:attribute>
      </setting>

      <setting name="Counters.InstanceName">
        <patch:attribute name="value"></patch:attribute>
      </setting>

      <setting name="Caching.SecurityCacheExpiration">
        <patch:attribute name="value">00:20:00</patch:attribute>
      </setting>

      <setting name="Media.DisableFileMedia">
        <patch:attribute name="value">false</patch:attribute>
      </setting>

      <setting name="Media.FileFolder">
        <patch:attribute name="value">/App_Data/Replicated/MediaFiles</patch:attribute>
      </setting>
    </settings>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

Many thanks, Shaun

Answer 1

Can you show your scalability settings? Specifically, the Instance Name and Publishing Instance Name for your CDs and CMs?

Usually, it is the event queues, as you surmised, but perhaps you have something off in those particular files for the instance names. They should all have the same publishing instance name value and unique values for the instance name.

Update:

Now that I see your scalability settings, I can see the issue. You will need to give your content management instance where publishing is occurring a name. Perhaps something as simple as "CM".

On the content management server, the scalability settings will need to be setup with the same value in the Publishing.PublishInstance and InstanceName settings (e.g. "CM").

On your content delivery servers, the scalability settings will need to be setup with the publishing instance value (e.g. Publishing.PublishInstance = "CM")

You can provide unique InstanceName values on each CD if you like, or leave it blank and Sitecore will generate a unique value for each CD.

Why is this needed?

The event queue informs all sitecore instances connected to it about the events coming from the publishing instance. Each instance needs to know who their associated publisher is so that they know which events to process.