+

1.Synchronous with Automatic Failover(High Availability):

- 3 servers:Principle,mirror & Witness
- This provides durable, synchronous transfer of data between principal and mirr
or, including automatic failure detection and failover.
- Transaction is not considered committed until SQL Server has successfully comm
itted it to the transaction log on both the principal and the mirror database.
- Performance overhead on this mode.
- Automatic or Manual Failover.
- Witness server -Yes
- Transaction safety-Full
2. Synchronous(High Protection or Safety):
d
-

In this mode, every transaction applied to the principal will also be committe
on the mirror server.
Only two servers(i.e. Principle and Mirror)
Witness server- No
Manual Failover
Transaction safety-Full

Note: In the Above Two cases Principle server waits for Acknowledgement from the
mirror server.
3. Asynchronous(High Performance):
-In this mode, the principal server sends log information to the mirror server,
without waiting for an acknowledgement from the mirror server.
- In this configuration you don t need a WITNESS Server and the Mirror Server acts
as a WARM standby and does not support automatic failure detection or failover.
- asynchronous data transfer between principal and mirror.
- Forced Failover
-Transaction safety-OFF

4. What are different modes available in database mirroring ?

a) High Performance -- It is also known as asynchronous mode, in this mode prin
cipal server sends transaction log to mirror server without waiting
for any acknowledgement. Transactions are in the principal server commits withou
t waiting mirror server to commit. (Transaction Safety Off).
b) High Safety -- It is also called as synchronous mode, every transaction in t
he principal will be commited after getting acknowledgement from the mirror serv
er.
The transaction on the principal server will be released only after commited at
mirror server. The high safety mode protects data. (Transaction Safety -- Full)
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Database Mirroring New features in SQL Server 2005:

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Instant Stand-By
Very fast Failover (3 sec) No Data-Loss
Automatic, Transparent Client-Redirect
Automatic Re-Sync after Failover.

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New Mirroring features in SQL Server 2008 compare to 2005
1. Page-level mirroring:
If a page on the principle or mirror server is corrupt, it is automatically repl
aced with corresponding copy on its partner
Automatic Page Repair on Mirror Servers.
If a page on the principle or mirror server is corrupt, it is automatically repl
aced with the corresponding copy on its partner
Some page types cannot be automatically repaired:
File header pages
Database boot page
Allocation pages
I/O errors on the principle server may be fixed during the mirroring session
I/O errors on the mirror server require the mirroring session to be suspended
2. Compressed Data flow:
Data Flow between the principle and mirror server is now compressed to improve p
erformance.
3. Manual Failover:
Manual failover no longer require a database restart.
4. Log Performance:
Write-ahead on the incoming log stream on the mirror server
Improved use of log-send buffers
Page read-ahead during the undo phase after a failover
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