Recovery Plan -

I want to make sure that what I'm thinking can actually be
done.
We currently have our production server with the datafiles
(including systems) on one removeable drive (E) and the
logs on another (F).We maintain a backup server that hold
all the data/log files on the D drive. Both server's have
the same server configurations.
The backup server is kept up to date via log shipping. If
we had disk failure, we would be able to bring the
databases out of standby mode and rename the server (with
a few other steps in there)...
HERE"S MY REAL QUESTION -
Now if we had a different failure where we had our disk
drives, but could no longer use the server, would the
following be possible.
Could we add the E and F drive to the backup server.
leaving the exsisting database in place. Modify the SQL
Server startup paramenters to use the master database on
the E drive instead of the D drive.
The master on the E drive would then point to all the
databases we have on the E and F drive and we would be
ready to go'
I hope that makes sense... It just seems a little too
easy...
Please advise and poke holes.
ThanksDefine removable drive here ... I'm not sure what you mean.
If you had a disk failure, why would you bother even
attempting an operation that may not work if your log
shipped secondary is brought online? I assume you'd want
to do some sort of attach, but that makes no sense. You
still have issues of DB users, etc.
You would also be changing the drive signatures, etc. I
wouldn't go there. And renaming everything (server, IP,
etc.) is always IMHO not the way to go. Your DR plans
should be able to tolerate the name change of the server
in a log shipping situation. Too many manual steps, too
many moving parts ... too many things that could go wrong.
Log shipping just works.|||By removable drives I mean external drives that can be
taken from one server and added to another. We do this
right now when we have large backups (150gig)that we need
to move to different servers. You haven't heard of this
before?
Since our log shipping server can be up to an hour behind,
if we have our production data we would prefer to use
that. The log shipping server is to be used only when we
cannot recovery the data from production.
Our current failover method does have attaching involved,
but I was thinking if my system databases are on the drive
we just moved over, why couldn't I point my SQL startup
paraments to the new master database, which in turn would
already have the databases/logins already setup.
>--Original Message--
>Define removable drive here ... I'm not sure what you
mean.
>If you had a disk failure, why would you bother even
>attempting an operation that may not work if your log
>shipped secondary is brought online? I assume you'd want
>to do some sort of attach, but that makes no sense. You
>still have issues of DB users, etc.
>You would also be changing the drive signatures, etc. I
>wouldn't go there. And renaming everything (server, IP,
>etc.) is always IMHO not the way to go. Your DR plans
>should be able to tolerate the name change of the server
>in a log shipping situation. Too many manual steps, too
>many moving parts ... too many things that could go wrong.
>Log shipping just works.
>
>.
>