log shipping between sql 2005 clusters

hi

I am working for a small govt dept.We are planning to implement sql 2005.

We will be having sql 2005 instance in active/passive cluster mode

We will also have a standby sql server 2005 in active/passive cluster mode.

i need to know how to configure log shipping between my primary and secondary?

Is logshipping the best option?

Thanks

Is logshipping the best option for what? Logshipping is a fine technology but there are other ways to get data to a secondary server. You can use database mirroring in SQL Server 2005. For failover purposes this is a great option. You can also use database snapshots on the same server for various reasons to. Logshipping is perfectly viable too. What are you trying to accomplish? Having redundancy outside of the cluster? Read Only reporting copy of data?

Having that info can help us help you make your choice. I would say look up in Books Online Logshipping, Database Snapshots and Database Mirroring.

|||

Thank you very much for the reply.

I need to have an exact replica of the live enviornment (production cluster) to be switched to (standby cluster) in case of any probs to the primary. We also do switching between primary and standby every week. Basically the standby is like having a disaster recovery site. Its having Redundancy outside the cluster.

Please suggest....

Thanks in advance

|||

Options are

Database Mirroring

Can be operated in Synchronous mode which means your standby will be an exact replica of your primary database. Switching between the two is easy.

However it doesn't support replication and in synchronous mode the data has to be written to the standby and so may impact performance of your app if your network connection isn't great.

You can work in Asynchronous mode in which case the data is written to the standby at some point after the application has finished the transaction, i.e. no impact on the application. However in this mode you may loose data if your primary goes down and the transaction hasn't made it to the standby.

Database Mirroing has automatic failover in the event of a failure (when used with a witness server)

Log Shipping

Very much like asynchronous mirroring however it supports multiple targets i.e. you could have 2 standby servers, you can't do that with mirroring. Also the mechanism for applying the logs is via a copy and restore model which is slightly different to mirroring.

Replication

Much more complicated than the two above but allows for your production to be in read/write mode (although changes are not replicated back to the primary). This is a great option for maintaining a reporting server as you can have different indexes on your reporting database.

Personally if your two clusters are connected by a highspeed network (Gb/s) I would go for synchronous mirroring.

More details can be found here

ms-help://MS.VSCC.v80/MS.VSIPCC.v80/MS.SQLSVR.v9.en/udb9/html/b2eda634-0f8e-4703-801b-7ba895544ff5.htm in BOL under the heading "Configuring for high availability."