How best to do remote site replication?

It has been suggested that we consider how to replicate our production
server to a remote site that does not have a dedicated connection to our
production environment. Any and all suggestions are appreciated.
TIA
Michael MacGregor
Database Architect
SalesDriver
Michael,
assuming there's no direct connection, this type of setup is usually done
through a VPN.
Here is a reference to help you:
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=321822.
Regards,
Paul Ibison
|||Additionally, I should mention that pull subscriptions would be most
suitable.
Regards,
Paul Ibison
|||Thanks Paul.
Totally new to replication and our IT guy is proposing some really weird and
wacky ideas on how to do this, one of which is low-level bit comparison, and
subsequent updating, of backup files to use to restore a database. Makes me
shake my head in wonder.
Michael MacGregor
Database Architect
SalesDriver
|||Michael,
if this is for disaster recovery you might want to consider log-shipping.
There have been a few threads recently (last 2 weeks) comparing this to
transactional replication which might be helpful, and it is a standard way
of maintaining a database copy. Using propriety solutions like
bit-comparisons would no doubt not be supported by ms, and presumably would
require a comparison of the full database backup. Also, log shipping will
just require that you transmit the changes which are in the log to the
remote site rather than full backups.
HTH,
Paul Ibison
|||To be honest, I'm not too sure what problem this is supposed to address. We
have an active/passive SQL Server cluster which has only been required once
in over three years. In addition there is a fairly standard backup/recovery
plan in effect with regular backups, both full and transactional, performed.
The IT guy has got the idea of having another SQL Server installed at a
remote site, to act as what I'm not sure, but wants to have it as close to
the production server as possible.
I wondered about log-shipping as well, but I'm not even sure that this idea
is going to fly anyway, but thought I'd do a little research of my own
before this issue gets raised on a more formal basis, at which point in time
I can address it better then.
Would you be able to provide me with the subject titles of the threads you
refer to?
Michael MacGregor
|||Michael,
the main thread was entitled "Disaster recovery - Use Replication or Log
shipping".
HTH,
Paul Ibison

How about getting a dedicated server to run and manage SQL jobs

Hi all:

Give me some feedback.

In my company, we have 10+ sql servers and many sql jobs running on every SQl server.

What about the idea that running all jobs on a dedicated sql servers?

at least 2 advantages

1.easy to managment

2.if agent server down, we restart the server not to impact the downtime of the production server.

any suggestion is welcome.

We had a similar setup which worked well.
Basically had big machines for SQL server and then used blades for "distributed" SSIS jobs.
All you really need is fast procs, lots of memory and not much disk space.
The idea was that as one box would become loaded, we would introduce another. All boxes would have the same jobs on it, but some disabled. The packages were run from a network location so should a box die, we can switch over quite quickly.

The issues are:
Licensing
Network performance
Cost

But if those are not a problem, it is a nice solution.

Hosting a dedicated SQL Server

I have a server that i would like to use as a dedicated DB Server. It is running Win Server 2k3 and SQL Server 2005. The typical upstream bandwidth is anywhere from 384Kb/s to 700Kb/s. Is this enough to host multiple SQL Server 2005 DB's?

The DB's will be used for database driven websites.

Please let me know what your thoughts are.

Thanks,

The answer varies on opinion... but as long as you don't over-use the database, you should be alright.

This answer, of course, changes as soon as your site get's really busy / large amounts of data need to move - but you could sit your presentation layer on top of some web services and implement caching on the web services to reduce the database traffic for most of your select operations.

Also, if multiple databases means more than 3 or 4 you could end up with a lot of connections that you might want to manage.