george sibbald (5/4/2009)
cmille19, thanks for the prompt reply, appreciate it.sorry to bang on but I need to clarify some points. you are using SQL clusters yes? Because mine are standalone servers so I don't have a virtual instance name. I am struggling to understand why you don't need to rename the server or at least update sysservers in master and entries in msdb because the server name has changed. (the systemdbs have after all in effect come from a different server).
updating msdb to run on a different server is easy in SQL 2000 but a nightmare in 2005.
are you saying you have to use named instances?
So your DR site is permanently used for QA, and if you failover you do without QA environment?
As you are booting from SAN anyway you don't see attaching all the secondary LUNS to a piece of identiacal kit waiting to receive them aa a method of failing over?
Yes, I'm using clusters. The reality is what is stored in sysservers for the local server is not important. You can run sp_dropserver and sp_addserver and have a server name other than the physical or virtual server name any every application will continue to connect and work fine. Keep in mind there are two server names in Windows. There is a NETBIOS/WINS name and host/DNS name. In DR scenario my AD administrators will update the DNS entry to point to the DR IP instead of the primary server IP. So in effect, I am renaming the hostname/DNS name. As long as all the connection strings use the DNS name all applications will continue to connect without needing to change connection strings.
Yes, I'm using named instances, however the same concept applies to default instances. My only point about named instance is ensuring the instance name is the same on both the primary and DR servers. For example primary site SQL instance is Z002\SQL1 and DR instance is Z002DR\SQL1. The SQL1 named instance portion is the same on both servers.
Yes, my DR servers are dual purpose as QA. We run about 4 DR failover tests per year and on those weekends the QA environment is unavailable. In the even of an actual DR failover there would be no QA. For that matter since my development environment is at my primary site, there would be no development either.
Yes, I'm booting from SAN and although I no longer replicate the SQL Server boot partitions I continue to do so for web and app servers. Keep in mind if you replicate the boot partition the DR server must be dark and you must bring the primary server down or isolate the DR network to avoid duplicates server names as the DR server will come onliine with the same name. If I were not using clustering I would replicate the boot partitions. Also if you're an HP shop you can use RILOE to power on servers remotely.