Can I use Failover Partner in my SQL connection string without mirroring?

Under the terms of Microsoft's licensing for SQL Server 2005/2008, you only need one license (per CPU) for your primary SQL server You don't have to buy an additional SQL server license for the mirror because the mirror server only communicates with the primary In the event of a failover, you have 30 days to failover back to the primary, otherwise you would then need to purchase additional licenses Here is the link to the licensing details, refer to Passive Servers / Failover Support on page 2 Microsoft's Licensing Overview.

Under the terms of Microsoft's licensing for SQL Server 2005/2008, you only need one license (per CPU) for your primary SQL server. You don't have to buy an additional SQL server license for the mirror because the mirror server only communicates with the primary. In the event of a failover, you have 30 days to failover back to the primary, otherwise you would then need to purchase additional licenses.

Here is the link to the licensing details, refer to Passive Servers / Failover Support on page 2. Microsoft's Licensing Overview...

Gregor, if I remember right, your witness server can be SQL Express running on very cheap hardware (desktop class PC even if you need). As far as I know, there is no way to do automatic failover without using either clustering or mirroring with a witness. See msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms18959... and msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms17519... for more info.

Snip taken from the 2nd url: "We strongly recommend that the witness reside on a separate computer from the partners. Database mirroring partners are supported only by SQL Server 2005 Standard and later versions and by SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition and later versions. Witnesses, in contrast, are also supported by SQL Server 2005 Workgroup and later versions and by SQL Server 2005 Express Edition and later versions.

A witness can run on any reliable computer system that supports any of these editions of SQL Server. However, we recommend that every server instance that is used as a witness correspond to the minimum configuration that is required for the SQL Server Standard version that you are running.

I was also searching for an answer to the original question about whether FailoverPartner is supported in non-mirrored environments. In our environment, there is a secondary database that is synchronized via replication. To test, I setup the following connection string within an SSIS OLEDB source: 'Data Source=PRIMARY;FailoverPartner=SECONDARY;Provider=SQLNCLI10.1;Network=dbmssocn;Database=myDB;User ID=user;Password=password;' When I run, I see the following error "The connection attempted to fail over to a database which is not configured for database mirroring."

So it appears to be not possible unless the secondary server is actually in a mirror configuration.

Under the terms of Microsoft's licensing for SQL Server 2005/2008, you only need one license (per CPU) for your primary SQL server.

Gregor, if I remember right, your witness server can be SQL Express running on very cheap hardware (desktop class PC even if you need). As far as I know, there is no way to do automatic failover without using either clustering or mirroring with a witness.

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