Log Shipping Vs. Replication

[ppdba]

My organization is in the process of creating a short term redundant data center. We will have three high speed (3 GHZ) desktop PC's & one redirector machine to operate the data center.

Here's configuration of our machines:

Machine1 = Primary SQL Server
Machine2 = Primary Web Server (w/ColdFusion 4.5)
Machine3 = Secondary Web Server/backup SQL Server
Machine4 = Redirector (Linux 6.2 system) with load balancer/failover software

I was researching on whether to use Log Shipping or Replication.

Can anyone provide feedback as to which would better suite us?

Thanks in advance.

 

[TomSark]

Are these servers warm-standy servers for which the data is to be replicated to/shipped? If so, I would use log shipping and implement the restore log...with standy solution that log shipping provides. If there is a failure on the primary server, you will have to manually activate the secondary server to make it the primary server.

I say this because replication can be a real pain and there is a lot of overhead when you use it, but, it does work, it just requires a lot more knowledge to implement and maintain it.

You might also consider clustering with an active/passive failover solution as opposed to these other two, if you have the hardware... Tom Davis
tdavis@sark.com

http://www.sarkdallas.com