sql server replication: Friends,

have any one set up above said techs between datacenters (2 or 4, more).
please evaluate pros and cons.

Yes, to all of the above. How many hours do you have to read pages of
stuff? That is NOT an easy question and it doesn't have an answer that can
be laid out in a small set of bullet points. Each technology does
dramatically different things and maintains data in dramatically different
ways. It would help to have an idea of exactly what you are trying to
accomplish and what your physical infrastructure looks like.

--
Mike
http://www.solidqualitylearning.com
Disclaimer: This communication is an original work and represents my sole
views on the subject. It does not represent the views of any other person
or entity either by inference or direct reference.


[quoted text, click to view]

Log shipping does the entire database. For large databases it can be
unwieldy and difficult to get started again after a hiccup. The standby
server must go offline when the logs are being applied. In general log
shipping is not considered to be scalable, although I consulted for a very
large online brokerage who uses it exclusively and are very happy with it.
There is no automatic failover with log shipping.

Replication is generally a good choice when you want to
mirror/replicate/copy a subset of your data from one server to one or more
servers. Log shipping and clustering are not scalable to large numbers of
subscribers/standby servers/nodes. Replication does require a higher skill
set than log shipping.

Clustering, especially geospatial clustering requires expensive hardware,
and a significant skill set. It will replicate/mirror a database(s). It is a
good technology to provide high availability and other than database
mirroring it is the only technology to do automatic failover.

--
Hilary Cotter
Director of Text Mining and Database Strategy
RelevantNOISE.Com - Dedicated to mining blogs for business intelligence.

This posting is my own and doesn't necessarily represent RelevantNoise's
positions, strategies or opinions.

Looking for a SQL Server replication book?
http://www.nwsu.com/0974973602.html

Looking for a FAQ on Indexing Services/SQL FTS
http://www.indexserverfaq.com



[quoted text, click to view]