Hi,

We are setting network license between primary server and secondary server. We plan to use SQL 2000 Logs shipping feature to synchronize 'baandb' of Primary server to Secondary server after every 2 hours.
My question is that baandb contains Tools company 000 and other companies. Should we have to avoid Company 000 data coping onto Seoncdary Server ? Will it cause any conflict? What if we apply Service Packs?What are the things that we need to take care in this environment?

Please advise asap.

Regards,

Muhammad Usman
00971 50 4817246
musman@iffco.co

What type of LogShipping are you going to employ? Transactional or Snapshot? Is your SQL Server Enterprise one or Standard edition? 000 company holds your license related data and i am not sure if baan on your secondary server would work. IF you are doing this for reporting purposes than you can avoid 000 company related data...

sk

We are using Ms SQL2000 Enterprise edition and we are going to use Transaction Log shipping feature. Also, the Secondary server will be validated. Hopefully, the license information will not cause any problem.

The baan database(baandb) will be sync using transaction log shipping, however, i am worried abt Application part.
Should we copy the entire Baan application folder on Secondary Server regularly. Alternatively, use Veritas Backup s/w to transfer modified files onto the Secondary server on regular interval basis.
Has any one done like that? Any suggestions.

Regards
MU

If i remember it correctly, while trying to do a transactional replication, SQL failed to continue because the lack of primary keys in the baan tables. This however was done on a Standard Edition SQL Server 2k. Although there shouldnt be any big difference in terms of replication, it would be interesting to know if tran replication is possible in Enterprise edition for baandb?

You still didnt mention the purpose of doing all this? Standby server, reporting server etc?

From your intention to sync application folders of baan, i guess you are looking forward to a Standby Server. IF so, the only concern should be the license....Server Names are going to be different and so how the license would work is something to think about...

Last but not least, if you have BCK(AFS) or OpenWorld installed, things could get a bit tricky..

sk

Yes, you are right we are looking for standby server, so called a cold backup server. This will be only used incase, if the primary server is down.

As far as licensing goes, we will enable the network license on both servers and users will be refrained from loging onto the secondary server.

To sync the secondary server with primary server, either we use some tools to do it on regular time intervals or we do manual data backup of primary server onto secondary server.

Now Baan Supports SQL Level II. Hope that primary key may not be an issue.

Any suggestions?

Regards,
MU

Based on what i tried with replicating baandb, the wizard stopped short at the table listings because none of the baan tables had any primary key in it. To test this out you could create another database on your standby server by restoring a sql dump of your baandb and try replicating(transactional) it. If it succeeds then you are through to go.

There is another way though without compromising performance or incurring complication that surrounds replication. That is through the use of Hourly differential backups. You could run an hourly differential backup and then restore this on the standby server everyhour. This would make the standby server up to the last hour(or half hour depending on your choice). SQL backups dont have any performance drag on the servers and its a simpler solution.

sk

Further to that, it would be best if you create a sequential dump of your 000 company on the standby server. When the main server goes down, after restoring sql differentials on the standby you could restore the 000 sequential dump so that your standby server should work without problems.

sk

During Service pack updates u should stop replication , bring both server in sync , apply the service packs to both services , sync both servers and start replication .

Taking transaction log backups and restore to other server every periodical interval say 15 min to 30 min can be a good practice . Dayend u can have differential/full backup depending on ur backup size and strategy .

Also tell me why u are not opting for SQL clustering which is more automatic and involves little human intervention . In sQL2k5 its there in standard version itself . Dont know abt that in SQL 2k .

Also tell me whether u plan to use the standby in passive mode or active mode .

U can view replication of application objects online (http://www.baanboard.com/baanboard/showthread.php?t=10551&highlight=replication+application+object) for replication of application and dictionary objects . This however postulates realtime replication (as against batch mode) especially for dictionary objects .