24/7 Uptime

Hello,
I have a unique requirement to keep the MSDE database up for 24/7 as much as
possible.
Once the hard disk fails on work station, it is programmed to boot up with
Flash Drive operating system. So, we installed MSDE software on a flash
drive.
How should I plan for data availability through Flash drive? The point over
here is that, the DB size is around 1.3 GB. It will take time to transfer all
the data from Host server to Flash drive MSDE instance.
Any innovative ideas of renaming DB files from work station to Flash Drive
DB files? When work station is up and working, it can communicate with Flash
Drive easily.
I really appreciate in advance!
David
hi David,
David wrote:
> Hello,
> I have a unique requirement to keep the MSDE database up for 24/7 as
> much as possible.
> Once the hard disk fails on work station, it is programmed to boot up
> with Flash Drive operating system. So, we installed MSDE software on
> a flash drive.
> How should I plan for data availability through Flash drive? The
> point over here is that, the DB size is around 1.3 GB. It will take
> time to transfer all the data from Host server to Flash drive MSDE
> instance.
> Any innovative ideas of renaming DB files from work station to Flash
> Drive DB files? When work station is up and working, it can
> communicate with Flash Drive easily.
I'm not very confortable with a solution like that..
first of all this is not a fault tolerance solution... ok, you'll perhaps
have little down time for the OS, but I'm not that confident on memory
flash... more, if I corectly understand you, your scenario id not redundant
as you planned only for db failure and not the whole system crash (say CPU,
mother board and the like)..
the ideal solution would be of course a cluster with a SAN.. if one node
fails the other will survive and be up without human intervention and no
needs for further adjustements.. and the SAN are usually protected in RAID
design...
another logical way could be replication, with 2 servers and the databases
in replica.. SQL Server Agent is there but a manual replica should be set
and without the use of EM as MSDE does not provide that tool...
or a kind of manual log shipping.. not that precise, but the like...
additionally you have to provide the path to switch from one server to the
other...
another solution could be 2 servers, 1 completely in stand by or even shut
down, where th elive one operates for db access on an external HD
(http://www.lacie.com) ..in case of hardware failure (not the disk, of
course), you just need to switch the USB external drive to the other
server..
USB 2 is of course slower than a standard HD, but I'd really prefer a
standard mechanical HD over a flash one... and of course you do not have
problems to migrate 1,5gb of data over the net (which could be even
impossible in case of complete failure of the original system)..
again, a path to point to the new server is required...
Andrea Montanari (Microsoft MVP - SQL Server)
http://www.asql.biz/DbaMgr.shtmhttp://italy.mvps.org
DbaMgr2k ver 0.15.0 - DbaMgr ver 0.60.0
(my vb6+sql-dmo little try to provide MS MSDE 1.0 and MSDE 2000 a visual
interface)
-- remove DMO to reply