Double MS-SQLServer Backup

[talshac]

Hi. I'm trying to establish a combination of two servers on two PC's, connected by LAN. I want each one to be the others backup in case one crushes or going down for maintenance. Is this possible? If it is, what would be the best method of doing it?
Thanks for your answers.

[MAK]

Any one of these will do the trick.

1. Log Shipping
2. You can use low level mirroring using third party softwares like Double take or veritas. When one server goes down, you can either attach the database restore the backups

3. Just backup the server1 database to Server2 using UNC path and vice versa.
Keep the restore script and login script ready. If the server goes down just restore the database.

[MAK]

Take a look at Steven Warren's article on double take.

http://www.databasejournal.com/featu...le.php/3338081

[talshac]

I hope the third party software isn't too expencive... it sounds just what I needed.
Thanks

[skhanal]

It's been a while (more than 2 years) since I looked at Double Take, but I did not find it useful for database before.

The main reason for that was, if you have a network congestion or network down for 5-10 sec, after network is available double take needed to verify whether files were in sync, and it took hours for data files which were around 12 GB.

I prefer log shipping, which does not cost anything, and you can limit your exposure to minutes (depending on log volume and your network bandwidth)