I need some assistance in developing a backup strategy for my SQL Server deployments. Currently I have two classes of customer: Hosted customers, whose data is housed in our datacenter, and On Premises customers who host their own data locally.
We are currently exploring whether to use Log Shipping or Database Mirroring for our Hosted customers as data loss of up to 15 minutes is acceptable (Log shipping interval would be 15 minutes, Mirroring would be in High Performance Mode), but we are still conducting testing on that.
My question is, if we choose a Mirroring strategy for our hosted customers, I doubt we would be able to do that with our our OnPrem customers – they will likely be using log shipping. Is it possible to have multiple recovery strategies database-by-database, or would I need a new instance of SQL Server for the OnPrem customers?
EDIT – Changed title to "Availability Strategies" because, well, this is more about availability than recovery.
Best Answer
Database Mirroring isn't a database recovery strategy. It's a high availability strategy. If you can afford to loose up to 15 minutes worth of data then you take transaction log backups every 15 minutes.
If you need to look into high availability that's a totally different conversation, but it doesn't remove the need to be taking transaction log backups.
As for your self-hosted customers, they are responsible for setting up their own backup solution unless your contract states that you'll work with them to set one up for them.