Question: What would be the best practice to configure Failover Clustering and Database Mirroring?

This question is frequently asked in one of the technical discussion groups I frequent. My reply follows.

I have a customer that wants to combine Failover Clustering with Database Mirroring in which the last one will… Read more

Question: Will the Mirror automatically fail back to the original Principal when it comes back online?

This question doesn't usually come up until someone has experienced an unplanned failover and something that they forgot about has been failing as a result. Hopefully this question will start coming up while planning… Read more

How do I ... Determine Database Growth If I Am Not Tracking It?

If your database has grown considerably and you're not sure when or why it happened, you'll be hard pressed to figure out the answer unless you're tracking changes in database size. Luckily, if you are performing regular… Read more

Question: Why does Database Mirroring Monitor report that my mirror is disconnected?

This question was sent to a discussion list via email. My reply follows.

Sometimes, I have seen a behavior where the Principal was unable to connect to the Mirror. What is the reason for this behavior? Could it… Read more

Question: Can a 2008 SQL instance be used as the witness for a 2005 database mirroring setup?

This question was sent to me via email. My reply follows.

Can a 2008 SQL instance be used as the witness for a 2005 database mirroring setup?

Databases to be mirrored are currently… Read more

Consider a simple scenario with Asynchronous mirroring: Read more