Differences between Mirroring and Clustering

Question

Differences between Mirroring and Clustering

Mr J

Hall of Fame

Points: 3595
More actions
February 12, 2009 at 4:11 pm

#134671

Hello,
Can someone please tell me the difference between Mirroring and Clustering and maybe give me some advice on which to use. We have two servers for a web site, a primary and a backup. If the primary goes down the web server flips to the backup server. What i need to know is which is the best method to keep both dbs in sync, keeping in mind that the dbs have to insert data from uses on the websites frequently. We have tried merged replication but because of the size of the database it just seems to take forever to reinitialize once theres a problem, so i was hoping mirroring or clustering could be the answer we are looking for.
Cheers
🙂
Remember
Without Change something sleeps inside of us that seldom awakens, the sleeper must awaken!!

Viewing 8 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply

Sudiendra SSCommitted Points: 1839 More actions · Answer 1

By clustering, you will have single point of failure both at disk level and SQL layer level. If your database is corrupted, you are gone. Cost will also be higher (i assume)

I would go for mirroring. If mirroring breaks, you will have to re-configure it using backups and all just like your replication job. But it will not break for any simple reason. I would say go for mirroring.

--Sudhie.

Mr J Hall of Fame Points: 3595 More actions · Answer 2

Cheers thanks for that. If i use mirroring and the primary server goes down can the backup act as the primary, maintaining identify fields so that once the primary is back up again all data will be in sync?

Remember
Without Change something sleeps inside of us that seldom awakens, the sleeper must awaken!!

Sudiendra SSCommitted Points: 1839 More actions · Answer 3

If primary goes down, you can bring secondary up in seconds just by a single command.

Detailed Documentation available here -

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/dbmirror.mspx

--Sudhie.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 736212 More actions · Answer 4

Actually if you use mirroring, it can automatically flip over if your clients have the SNAC clients.

clustering will flip things over inside a minute, slower than mirroring.

corruption can get moved through mirroring as well. It depends on what happens.

replication works great, but hard to administer, and no failover (transactional). Merge can work, but you need bigger boxes if you are having issues.

Mr J Hall of Fame Points: 3595 More actions · Answer 5

Thanks heaps Steve, i really wanna understand all the pros and cons from peoples experiences 🙂

Remember
Without Change something sleeps inside of us that seldom awakens, the sleeper must awaken!!

murthykalyani SSCarpal Tunnel Points: 4500 More actions · Answer 6

Hi steve,

I have not implemented Mirroring or tested, but after going through various articles understood that only user created databases can be mirrored.

In this case if principal goes does, standby will be accessible.

Here I have a question how does logins gets transferred to principal?

Regards

samsql Hall of Fame Points: 3044 More actions · Answer 7

hi if we do not create a witness server will our data loss.... i hav mirroring created on 1 server with out witness server .... i hav tested the mirroring with out witness server created wat i have seen is if the data is not commited will loss the data...