Log shipping from 64-bit to 32-bit boxes?

My company is considering a new Itanium cluster in our production
environment. Our DR boxes are still 32-bit with no plans to replace
them with 64-bit boxes. We currently log ship our production DBs from
our 32-bit production clusters to our 32-bit DR cluster.
My boss asked me this week (as part of the Itanium considerations) if
we'll be able to still log ship the production DBs from our new 64-bit
SQL instances to our 32-bit DR SQL instances. After a little thought I
said it would probably work but I've never done it myself or read
anything from someone who had done it so I couldn't say definitively
that it would work. (I fired off the question to my TAM but haven't
heard back from him.)
The only potential problem I can think of would be during the restore
phase of the sync - will a backup from a 64-bit instance restore
properly to a 32-bit instance? Do they have different internal DB
structures like SQL 7.0 vs SQL 2000 for example? If so, will that
conversion happen automagically like SQL 7 -> 2000?
Has anyone done this before (log shipping from a primary 64-bit SQL
instance to a secondary 32-bit SQL instance)? Does it work? Is it
supported by Microsoft? Can the log shipping monitor run on a 32-bit
instance?
*mike hodgson*
blog: http://sqlnerd.blogspot.com
Never tried it yet but it should work as far as I know. You can take a 32 bit backup or detached file and restore it or attach it to a 64 bit and visa versa. So I see no reason why log shipping would not work. The internal structures do not change.
Andrew J. Kelly SQL MVP
"Mike Hodgson" <mike.hodgson@.mallesons.nospam.com> wrote in message news:uH9URVImFHA.1148@.TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
My company is considering a new Itanium cluster in our production environment. Our DR boxes are still 32-bit with no plans to replace them with 64-bit boxes. We currently log ship our production DBs from our 32-bit production clusters to our 32-bit DR cluster.
My boss asked me this week (as part of the Itanium considerations) if we'll be able to still log ship the production DBs from our new 64-bit SQL instances to our 32-bit DR SQL instances. After a little thought I said it would probably work but I've never done it myself or read anything from someone who had done it so I couldn't say definitively that it would work. (I fired off the question to my TAM but haven't heard back from him.)
The only potential problem I can think of would be during the restore phase of the sync - will a backup from a 64-bit instance restore properly to a 32-bit instance? Do they have different internal DB structures like SQL 7.0 vs SQL 2000 for example? If so, will that conversion happen automagically like SQL 7 -> 2000?
Has anyone done this before (log shipping from a primary 64-bit SQL instance to a secondary 32-bit SQL instance)? Does it work? Is it supported by Microsoft? Can the log shipping monitor run on a 32-bit instance?
mike hodgson
blog: http://sqlnerd.blogspot.com