Bill Dykstra (10/16/2014)

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Thanks for the feedback on this.

I wondered about that (using the same log shipping files). I like the idea, especially since the backup files have already been copied over the VPN from the remote production server. It saves me from copying everything from remote a second time.

One possible problem - my (limited) understanding of STANDBY mode is that the data in staging would be read-only, correct? That will cause some problems, as some of the applications being tested on the staging server do various writes to the db as users are accessing the app - even if they're not directly editing user-data. The apps will likely throw errors if they cannot write to the db.

Also, if the data on staging is modified by someone running some tests, that will impact log shipping from being able to continue restores from production, correct?

Thanks again,

Bill