One or more databases are at the heart of every
organization. When your critical databases are unavailable or unresponsive,
your company suffers. Depending on your situation, when your database is down
your company may be losing revenue, as well as customers lose faith in your
business. Therefore, it is critical to keep your databases up and running
during your normal business hours.
Microsoft did a fair job of providing high availability
options like database mirroring and failover clustering in SQL Server 2005.
However, with the introduction of SQL Server 2008 they provided additional high
availability options that where typically only available using third party
products. With SQL Server 2008, you can now come close to zero downtime for
your SQL Server environment. This white paper explores Database Mirroring, Log
Shipping, Failover Clustering, Peer-to-Peer Replication, Database Snapshots and
Dynamic configuration.
With all the different high availability options and
configuration settings, you need to determine which options make sense for your
situation. You need to weigh the different SQL Server failover options against
your high availability requirements. You will need to determine which hardware
and software options fit into your budget and requirements. SQL Server 2008
provides many rich options that your DBA can use to implement a database
environment that will scale with your needs and provide you the fault tolerance
your company requires.