Hi all.

Any assistance regarding this would be greatly appreciated.

We have configured two sql server 2005 clustered environments - one will be
hosted at our local datacenter and the other at our DR site. These two
clusters are geographically dispersed.

The clusters will be configured as active/passive and I would like to
incorporate sql server 2005 database mirroring between the two clusters for
redundancy. Both clusters have the same domain names

My questions are:
can I configure both sql clustered instances to have the same sql virtual
server and instance name, so that in the event that the datacenter goes down,
we can initiate a manual failover between principal and mirror and the
front-end applications would still be able to connect using the same server
and instance name at the DR site?
If we cant have the same server and instance names, how can I configure the
cluster at DR site assume the identity of the primary virtual sql server and
instance name so that no code changes are required to point to the databases?

Many thanks.

You can't have identical server and instance names. You can set up the
connect string to include the mirror. This way, when a client attempts to
connect to the primary and it is offline, then they connect to the mirror.

Other things to consider would include the speed of your WAN link and how
much traffic you get when you defrag indexes, for example. In SQL 2005,
mirror traffic is not compressed. You may want to consider log shipping but
with a 3rd-party compression tool, such as Red Gate's SQL Backup.

Also, in a DR situation, you would likely want to have redundancy of your
middle-tier servers - not just your DB servers.

--
Tom

----------------------------------------------------
Thomas A. Moreau, BSc, PhD, MCSE, MCDBA, MCITP, MCTS
SQL Server MVP
Toronto, ON Canada
https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile/Tom.Moreau


"xyberdobs" <xyberdobs (AT) discussions (DOT) microsoft.com> wrote

Hi all.

Any assistance regarding this would be greatly appreciated.

We have configured two sql server 2005 clustered environments - one will be
hosted at our local datacenter and the other at our DR site. These two
clusters are geographically dispersed.

The clusters will be configured as active/passive and I would like to
incorporate sql server 2005 database mirroring between the two clusters for
redundancy. Both clusters have the same domain names

My questions are:
can I configure both sql clustered instances to have the same sql virtual
server and instance name, so that in the event that the datacenter goes
down,
we can initiate a manual failover between principal and mirror and the
front-end applications would still be able to connect using the same server
and instance name at the DR site?
If we cant have the same server and instance names, how can I configure the
cluster at DR site assume the identity of the primary virtual sql server and
instance name so that no code changes are required to point to the
databases?

Many thanks.

I am implementing such a configuration now, except that DR is a stand-alone
server.

Use a DNS alias to abstract your Primary cluster. When you implement a
mirror failover, change the DNS record to point to the alternate server.

--
Geoff N. Hiten
Principal SQL Infrastructure Consultant
Microsoft SQL Server MVP


"xyberdobs" <xyberdobs (AT) discussions (DOT) microsoft.com> wrote