Windows Sharepoint 2010 high availability solution

i don't think your question is specific enough.  there are various ways to provide "high availability".  which approach are you taking?

this article describes the options, and has links to resources for each method:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc748824.aspx

We are going to have a Sharepoint 2010 server. We would like to have a spare server in a different datacenter connected thru a VPN. We are going to need to copy all the live changes from the lice SQL2008 Sharepoint database to the spare server DB. What is the best way to accomplish that. Will SQL Replication copy the live database? Will it work with Sharepoint 2010?

Thanks

That method won't work.  SharePoint binds server configuration into the registries and the database that includes the server names.  SQL replication is unsupported for that usage and would kill performance.

SharePoint 2010 does support mirroring to two SQL database servers but performance of the SQL mirroring over VPN could be slow.  To use Mirroring you cannot use the embedded SQL and need to use two licensed copies of it, plus you need a 3rd SQL server as a witness server for the SQL mirrors.

Do you want failover for the front end servers?  Then you need to setup a hardware load balancing device to redirect DNS names for the web applications because two servers in different data centers can't use Microsoft's free network load balancing.

Hello,

Thanks for the response.

Just to make sure I am understanding the process to set up 1 sharepoint 2010 live environment and a Backup sharepoint 2010 environment (we would like to replicate all the latest change in the DB)

I will need 2 sharepoint 2010 standard server licenses with sql 2008. 1 extra sql 2008 db server to run as a watchdog for the SQL 2008 Mirror.
I do not want fail-over in the front end servers. We want to set up a Active/Standby environment to and extra DNS entry.

In case of an emergency we will fail to the backup environment and then schedule a transfer back period. Let me know if you have any suggestions

Thanks

Sorry, but you misunderstood.  It's not a replicate or hot standby.  It's a configuration of one SharePoint farm spread to two geographic locations that I am recommending.  You can use a DNS entry to flip between front end servers to present the web pages, however, both web front ends are active participants in the same SharePoint farm so you do not need to SharePoint 2010 standard licenses.

The problem we are having is that at times the main headquarters( for being in a new building ) need to be power down 3 time a year for 3 days. So with this method we will have a replicated DB but no we application to log into. Is that correct? What will be the recommendable solution in this scenario

Thanks

So I will create a farm or 2 application (one local-one datacenter) pointing to a DB(local) and the failover DB will be in the datacenter. also set up a watchdog DB server to monitor SQL monitoring.
Thanks