Grouped Failover, a 2008R2 version of Availability Groups

One of the new cool features in SQL 2012 is the SQL Server Availability groups. In other words being able to failover a group of databases which are logically connected. i.e. SharePoint databases. Well, it is also possible to do that in SQL 2008 (R2). It’s called a Grouped Failover. Instead of configuring it in SQL mirroring, you have to administrate the connected databases yourself and with a single stored procedure you will be able to failover a group of databases. It also gives you the option to failover a group of mirrored databases when the principal is down.

How to implement this solution

First run the script and it will create a database, 3 tables and a stored procedure. Of the 3 tables 2 of them need to be filled with configuration you desire or need. In the table tblFailoverGroups you create 1 or more failover groups. In the table tblFailoverGroupDatabases you need to add the databases that are linked to the failover group you just created. You can also add databases that are not mirrored, but have a logical connection to the failover group. These database will not failover since they are not mirrored.