Double-Take Failover Control Center
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In his The Hot Button blog, TechRepublic columnist Steven Warren outlined how you can provide high availability with Microsoft SQL Server and NSI Software’s DoubleTake. This gallery’s 12 screenshots show you how to configure DoubleTake for SQL Server failover.
Adding a Target machine
Adding a Monitor
On this window, you can select your failover to be Automatic or Manual. Secondly, you can also decide what items you want to failover. Once you have chosen your options, click Scripts.
This is where you will attach your postover and preback batch file scripts. In the event of a failover, the scripts will shut down the specific services and start them on the Target server. When a failback occurs, it will do the opposite. Without attaching these scripts, this functionality will not work.
The SQL Servers that DoubleTake is currently monitoring
When a failover occurs on the Source machine, your target machine will begin to process the requests for both machine names and IP addresses as shown in here.
From the Failover Control Center, shown here, you can test the failover process.
Performing a manual failover to test the setup.
The manual failover in progress
Once the failover is complete both IP addresses will respond to ping commands and requests from the network until you fix the downed server.
The downed server
Bill Detwiler is the Editor for Technical Content and Ecosystem at Celonis. He is the former Editor in Chief of TechRepublic and previous host of TechRepublic's Dynamic Developer podcast and Cracking Open, CNET and TechRepublic's popular online show. Previously, Bill was an IT manager in the social research and energy industries. He has bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Louisville, where he has also lectured on computer crime and crime prevention.
