eric3123
asked on
Does windows 2008 r2 standard platform have server mirroring
Back in my Novell days Novell had a feature SFT-III, where in two servers mirrored each other and if one server went down, the other server would take over, resulting in seamless uninterrupted service from the client perspective. Does such a capability exist - either built-in or after market, for Windows 2008 R2 Standard platform? Assume we'd put these two servers on the same subnet, in opposite ends of a building linked with Fiber Optic cabling. The server is ordinary file/print, W2k8 R2 standard, an AD, no exchange or public iis servers. They have an ms access database. Potential for Sql Server and Sql anywhere (quickbooks), and sharepoint in the future.
Govvy
Look at NLB: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc754833(WS.10).aspx
Windows architecture itself is distributed with Active Directory, where you assign FSMO roles to different servers such as the global catalog server and such. Back in NT4 it used to be called a PDC and BDC and those terms still stick around, but they aren't accurate.
Really what you need is application level fail over, and yes, SQL Server does provide mirroring as you described. SQL Server mirroring will work with a with a 'witness' server which will notice if the server hosting SQL Server is not responsive on the SQL Server layer, and will automatically fail over to the mirrored database.
There is a 'gotcha'. You have 2 options for mirroring, synchronous and asynchronous. Synchronous mirroring is dangerous, but guarantees that 100% of committed transactions are copied over first to the secondary mirrored copy, then they are applied to the primary server. If something goes wrong with it committing the transaction on the mirrored copy, you will have major issues. I recommend Asynchronous mirroring. With Asynch, you will probably lose a small amount of transactions in flight to the mirrored copy but it will have 0 impact to production, worst case scenario you lose a few. This is clearly not acceptable to a bank or something that sensitive, but in most cases, it's a fine solution.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms175191.aspx
Really what you need is application level fail over, and yes, SQL Server does provide mirroring as you described. SQL Server mirroring will work with a with a 'witness' server which will notice if the server hosting SQL Server is not responsive on the SQL Server layer, and will automatically fail over to the mirrored database.
There is a 'gotcha'. You have 2 options for mirroring, synchronous and asynchronous. Synchronous mirroring is dangerous, but guarantees that 100% of committed transactions are copied over first to the secondary mirrored copy, then they are applied to the primary server. If something goes wrong with it committing the transaction on the mirrored copy, you will have major issues. I recommend Asynchronous mirroring. With Asynch, you will probably lose a small amount of transactions in flight to the mirrored copy but it will have 0 impact to production, worst case scenario you lose a few. This is clearly not acceptable to a bank or something that sensitive, but in most cases, it's a fine solution.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms175191.aspx
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ASKER
Thanks everyone for the replies, I will give Heroware a look.
ASKER
It had the most comprehensive answer.