Preparing the Disaster Recovery SQL Servers

Createa set of SQL Server database instances in the disaster recovery site. To ensure that the disaster recovery SQL Server database instances can provide the same level of performance as the production SQL Server database instances, the disaster recovery SQL Server database instances should be configured with similar hardware and number of physical computers running SQL Server. In this scenario, BizTalk Server log shipping will be configured for each production SQL Server database instance to apply to a corresponding SQL Server database instance at the disaster recovery site.

A key BizTalk Server log shipping requirement is that the drive letter(s) on the production site where the database files are stored match the drive letter(s) at the disaster recovery site where the database files are restored. So if the SQL Server database file group is located on G:\data in production, there must be a G:\data directory on the destination (DR) server, or the restore will fail.

BizTalk Server log shipping does not support the RESTORE WITH MOVE SQL Server command. Because of this, we recommend that database instance names at the disaster recovery site match the database instance names in production (by default, the instance name is part of the file path). Another option is to simply create a directory on the corresponding drive letter in the disaster recovery computer running SQL Server so that the RESTORE operation can create the file in the same directory structure as is used in production.

Create SQL Server security logins for the disaster recovery site that correspond to the production site so that in the event that a failover to the disaster recovery site is required, all required security logins are present on the destination system.

Once installation of the disaster recovery SQL Server instances is completed, perform a full backup of master and msdb databases so that a clean system can be restored in the event that a switch to the disaster recovery site fails.