After replication running for a year, the nightly expired subscription cleanup job suddenly failed. Tracking everything down, the repl_distributor linked server fails connection attempts with the following:
Server 'repl_distributor' is not configured for DATA ACCESS. (.Net SqlClient Data Provider)
However, I script out the linked server and it shows this:
EXEC master.dbo.sp_serveroption @server=N'repl_distributor', @optname=N'data access', @optvalue=N'true'
GO
Ironically replication is still working just fine, as verified through tracer tokens, etc.
Note that I did reboot this server last night before the issues started, so I'm sure it's related.
Any ideas?