Jeff Moden (10/3/2011)
Ben Moorhouse (10/3/2011)
No offence, but who said anything about switching between versions?In my mind, 2008 > 2005 isn't a proper backup.
I have 2005 backing up to a 2005 box and being restored and checked (granted very basic checks) daily.
If something were to go wrong, then I could just failover to the other box whilst the issue is fixed on the primary box.
Equally, no offense, but Brad did in his article...
Upgrading from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2008 is a risk;
And you've made my very point... trying to a restore from 2k8 to 2k5 to undo a bad upgrade isn't possible. And just failing over to "the other box" would be a futile step even if it were a 2k5 box because, after collecting data on the new 2k8 box for a couple of days, the 2k5 "fail over" box would be quite out of date.
Would you leave your system without a viable backup for a couple of days, knowing that losing that couple of days worth of data isn't acceptable?
If it is acceptable however (in my case it SOMETIMES is), then that's fine - fail over to the 2nd box and accept the loss. Do a bit more testing next time to avoid failing twice.