I was looking at the SQL2005 mirroring feature, and from what I understand it from the BOL, the failover process is managed at the client level. In my opinion this design has three big disadvantages, first it doesn’t really guaranty that the mirror is really a mirror of the principal database, second it increase the network traffic in case of the principal failure to respond and third it requires that all the old apps to be updated with a data access provider that supports mirroring.< ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
What I was hoping when I heard about mirroring was something similar with RAID1 but in database terms, and I mean by that that SQL Server will keep the principal and secondary databases in synch (perform transactions on both databases in the same time) and when it sees that the principal database is marked suspect (or some other user defined criteria) it will automatically switch to the secondary database without users noticing any service interruption.
Please let me know what is your opinion on mirroring.