Guest Editorial – Chris Shaw, SSWUG Site Manager
Have you used Database mirroring?
Database mirroring was a feature released in SQL Server 2005 service pack 1. When deployed on your systems, it will make a copy of your database and ship it to another server. The server can be located in the next rack, a building across the street or even on the other side of the country. Database mirroring can support automatic failover just like clustering; however, a witness server is needed to be the judge of when a failover needs to occur.
I have only seen a few deployments of mirroring until today, but the ones I have seen are very stable. Recently I was talking to a contact at Microsoft and they had mentioned to me that mirroring in SQL Server 2008 is much faster than in SQL Server 2005. It was faster to the point where serious consideration can be given in using mirroring to replace clustering. As we look at the two failover options with SQL Server, I would think we have many more clusters than mirrors; however, mirroring could be a much more affordable solution for the same results.
Are you using database mirroring, and if so, how does it fit your solution? Have you been happy with it and what failover experiences have you had with it?
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