GSquared (3/9/2011)
How transactional are the databases? Does it vary from database to database or are they all the same? What kind of connection are you log shipping through and how much bandwidth does it have? How fast does your co-location restore the shipped logs and how reliable is their uptime? How reliable is your uptime? Are you backing up to a separate I/O subsystem than your data and log files? Are your databases on a SAN? If so, how is that configured? How about your log files? The backups?
And...
Why do you say mirroring isn't possible?
What's the downtime SLAs for these databases? Same for all or different for each?
What are the data loss SLAs for these databases? Same for all or different for each?
How far away is the co-location? Is it far enough for the potential disasters whereever you are?
Do you need automated failover?
etc...
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability