I have been asked to implement a SQL server environment
with a HTML front end accessing SQL data. The data will
be accessed mostly to read, but some changes will be made
by clients. The server will need to be online
permanently, however there will need to be fairly regular
database updates in the form of data replacement and
changes. I cannot see the need to cluster, however am not
sure of the best solution. I am thinking along the lines
of one Web server accessing two SQL servers, only one of
which is live at any time. For major database updates,
the idea is that the data on the on-line server is
switched to read only, data is copied to the offline
server, the offline server is then updated, and the front
end web server is switched to communicate with the
updated server (swapping the online/offline server). Is
this the right way to tackle this problem or are there
other ways using clustering? Can anyone point me in the

Have you considered Log Shipping or Trnsactional replication to sync the
data on both servers. These would not require that the databses on the live
server be set to read-only.

Rand
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Thanks - I presume you mean clustering the two servers
and then updating one that then replicates to the other.
Can this be done easily when the databases are being
almost completely replaced? Can you give me an idea of