The Fundamentals of SQL Server Replication by Sebastian Meine

Many of my clients need to make data that lives on one server available on another server. There are many reasons for such a requirement. You might want to speed up cross-server queries by providing a local copy of the data. Or you might want to make the data available to resource intensive reporting queries without impacting the OLTP load, maybe even with an intentional delay so you're always reporting against complete days only. Finally, you might be looking to implement high availability. In all these situations, SQL Server Replication is a viable option to look at when planning for the implemen­tation of such a requirement.