Hey all

We just got two new servers, that are running Windows Server 2008. The intent is to make the machines pretty much identical, copying the content of the master to the slave on a nightly basis, so that if anything fails, the second copy can stand in immediately. It doesn't need to be up-to-the-minute mirroring, though I suppose that wouldn't hurt if performance is not affected.

The two machines will, amongst other things, each be running an instance of SQL Server 2008. The aim is to duplicate the databases on the master down to the slave on a nightly basis. Unless I'm misunderstanding, the slave databases in mirrored databases require the primary to be present to work correctly; I'm hoping for some solution where we have a second machine that can be up and running with minimal downtime if the first one falls over.

Am I misunderstanding mirroring? Is that the best way to do things, or should I use some other mechanism? If so, what?