• That's correct at the DR site there is an identical server where all volumes are replicated at the disk level from one SAN to another SAN over two OC3 pipes using SRDF/A. The DR server does not have the disks mounted, they are unmounted and a series EMC commands are run to mount the volumes. The DR SQL Server is configured as follows:

    One time setup -- Use a temporary volume to install SQL Server service using same instance name and path as primary site. Set SQL Server service to manual at DR site, remove temporary volume, setup SRDF/A to replicate all volumes except the OS this includes the system databases (master...). The repliated volumes remain unmounted. In event of disaster or during several annual tests run EMC scripts to mount the volumes, start SQL Server service and swing DNS entry. When SQL Server comes online its a mirror image of primary site SQL Server. The actual time it takes to mount the volumes is almost instaneous. The disk replication is within one minute of the primary site and setup to be consistent across a set of disks. The particular setup we are running is nothing speical in that you can have EMC design a identical solution. Here's one more cool thing about using SAN based replication. Since its a SAN based solution we use the same technique for all of servers including Unix, Windows, web, app and of course SQL Server. On the Web and App servers we maintain dark servers and replicate teh boot partition i.e. the C drive. Because of MS cluster setup at the primary site and the lame setup of storing IP Addresses as part of the cluster configuration we cannot replicate the boot partitions of the SQL Servers. Although we have replicated boot partitions for non-clustered SQL Servers in the past, however as I now longer have non-clustered SQL Servers.