Database Mirroring Overview
In database mirroring, an originating SQL Server 2005 instance continuously sends a database's transaction log records to a copy of the database on another standby SQL Server instance. The originating database and server have the role of principal, and the receiving database and server have the role of mirror. The principal and mirror servers must be separate instances of SQL Server 2005.In all SQL Server databases, data changes are recorded in the transaction log before any changes to actual data pages are made. The transaction log records are placed first in a database's log buffer in memory, and then flushed to disk (or 'hardened') as quickly as possible. In database mirroring, as the principal server writes the principal database's log buffer to disk, it simultaneously sends that block of log records to the mirror instance.
When the mirror server receives a block of log records, it places the log records first into the mirror database's log buffer and then hardens them to disk as quickly as possible. Those transaction log records are later replayed on the mirror. Because the mirror database replays the principal's transaction log records, it duplicates the database changes on the principal database.
The principal and mirror servers are each considered a partner in the database mirroring session. A database mirroring session consists of a relationship between the partner servers when they mirror a database from one partner to another. A given partner server may have the principal role for one database and a mirror role for a different database.
In addition to the two partner servers (principal and mirror) a database mirroring session may have an optional third server, called the witness. The witness server's role is to enable automatic failover. When database mirroring is used for high availability, if a principal server suddenly fails, if the mirror server has confirmation from the witness, it can automatically take on the role of principal and make its database available within a few seconds.
Some important items to note about database mirroring:
- The principal database must be in the FULL recovery model. Log records that result from bulk-logged operations cannot be sent to the mirror database.
- The mirror database must be initialized from a restore of the principal database with NORECOVERY, followed by restores in sequence of principal transaction log backups.
- The mirror database must have the same name as the principal database.
- Because the mirror database is in a recovering state, it cannot be accessed directly. You can create database snapshots on the mirror to indirectly read the mirror database at a point in time. (See 'Database Mirroring and Database Snapshots' later in this paper.)
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