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Published on

November 9, 2021

Implementing Disaster Recovery in SQL Server with Log Shipping

When it comes to ensuring business continuity and protecting critical data in the event of a disaster, implementing a sound disaster recovery plan is paramount for organizations of any size. Microsoft’s SQL Server offers a robust set of features to support disaster recovery, and one potentially indispensable feature for any SQL Server disaster recovery plan is Log Shipping. This article aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of Log Shipping, how it contributes to disaster recovery, and steps to implement it effectively in SQL Server.

Understanding Disaster Recovery and Log Shipping

Disaster recovery (DR) refers to the strategic approach and processes involved in protecting an organization’s operations from significant adverse events. These events could range from natural disasters to hardware failures or even cyber attacks, that threaten the availability and integrity of mission-critical database systems.

Log Shipping contributes to disaster recovery by automating the process of sending transaction log backups from a primary SQL Server database to one or more secondary servers. The transaction log backups are then restored to the secondary databases on a defined schedule, keeping them closely synchronized with the primary database without requiring simultaneous write-access.

Benefits of Log Shipping for Disaster Recovery

  • High Availability: Log Shipping provides a measure of high availability for the database, allowing the secondary database to quickly become the primary in case of a disaster.
  • Offsite Copy: It maintains an offsite copy of the data, which is an essential component of a well-rounded DR strategy.
  • Backup Frequency Control: You can control the frequency of log backups, which determines how up-to-date the secondary databases are.
  • Accessibility for Reporting: The secondary server can be used for running reports while in read-only mode, thus offloading some of the workloads from the primary server.

Key Considerations Before Implementing Log Shipping

While Log Shipping offers numerous benefits, certain key considerations must be addressed:

  • Recovery Model: The primary database must be using the Full or Bulk-Logged recovery model so that transaction logs can be properly backed up.
  • Monitor Server: An optional monitor server is useful for tracking log shipping and alerting the DBAs in case of failures or delays.
  • Network Bandwidth: Ample network bandwidth is required between the primary and secondary server, especially when frequent log backups are transferred.
  • Read-only access: Determine if secondary databases will be used for read-only operations and plan accordingly.
  • Role Change Handling: Organizations must plan for the potential role change of databases and ensure applications can efficiently switch their connection strings from primary to secondary roles.

These are not all the factors to be considered but represent some of the critical questions that need to be addressed to set up a functional log shipping environment.

Implementing Log Shipping in SQL Server

To implement Log Shipping, several vital steps must be executed:

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business continuity, Data Protection, disaster recovery, high availability, Log Shipping, monitor server, network bandwidth, read-only access, Recovery Model, SQL Server, Transaction Log Backups

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