MS SQL 2008 failover between sites

radek_kubka — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 06:50:22 GMT

Hi all,

I was wondering what your experience / recommendations are re protecting MS SQL 2008 against site-level outages?

In the particular case I am looking at, the links between sites are decent (low latency, high bandwidth), yet not good enough for MetroCluster. The fail-over process itself not necessarily has to be fully automated, yet it should be easy to accomplish, ideally without custom scripting.

So this is my list of different technologies, both NetApp-specific & storage agnostic:

- Native SQL database mirroring in High Availability mode - although sports an automated fail-over, I was always under impression the client application has to be written with the fail-over 'awareness' in mind, or it plainly won't be automated

- SMSQL + SnapMirror - fail-over requires either multiple steps, or scripting (unless I am missing something)

- SMSQL + SnapMirror + Veritas Cluster - as per TR-3713; looks like exactly what I am looking for, yet it's not tremendously popular, is it? Does anyone knows whether it works / is docummented for SQL 2008?

- Virtualising SQL & utilising SMSQL + SnapMirror + VMware SRM - probably my preferred one, due to e.g. having one methodology for protecting multiple systems

- Neverfail - I am somewhat skeptical about reliability of this product, but happy to listen to others whose experience is different

- SnapProtect - can the fail-over be any simpler than in the case of SMSQL?

Opinions? Any other approaches not listed above?

Thanks & regards,

Radek

MS SQL 2008 failover between sites

radek_kubka — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 09:50:05 GMT

Hi,

I am still very keen to hear other people's thoughts, yet in the particular case I am working on, this method was selected:

- Virtualising SQL & utilising SMSQL + SnapMirror + VMware SRM

Reasons:

- can be fully automated (only the actual fail-over decision requires human intervention)

- easy testing

- can cover multiple (virtualised) applications

- well documented

- fairly popular, people with required skills available

Regards,

Radek

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MS SQL 2008 failover between sites

MS SQL 2008 failover between sites