Piecemeal Restore and database mirroring

[bluto99]

Hi all,

We are running with SQL Server 2008 R2 and are in the system design stages of making a large database resilient and recoverable within a set time frame. Our current preferred setup is to use SQL Server mirroring to provide the resilience and ease of server maintenance and combine it with on-line piecemeal restores to enable us to quickly recover in a DR scenario.

Has anyone done it or is it possible to use online piecemeal restore to get the database available and then use this partially restored database to re-create the mirror before allowing database updates to the primary database, then finally finish the restore of the read-only filegroups while the primary and mirror are recording new transactions.

I would really appreciate any help with this or any alternatives that we may be able to consider.

Many Thanks,
Gary.

 

[yelworcm]

To set up a mirror for a database, I believe all you need is to get the mirror database to a consistent point. If you use filegroup backups to get your mirror database set up, you would just need to add in all the transaction log backups to make sure that all of the filegroups agree with one another on the LSN. You should be able to set up an empty database with a couple filegroups to test this out with.

 

[bluto99]

Thanks for the post...

I am not quite in a position to test this yet but I am testing partial online restores and then restoring the read-only filegroups later.

I can see that we may be able to create a mirror on partial restore primary and apply subsequent transaction logs across the mirror. I am wondering what I would need to do to get the other READ-ONLY filegroups re-attached to the Primary and mirror.
Do I need to run a restore against the primary followed by a restore against the mirror?

Is this clear? If you need further explanation of what I am trying to do, please met let me know.

Many Thanks,
Gary.