Sander Stad has started a series on using dbatools to help set up log shipping. Part one walks through the basics and setup:
Technically you don’t need multiple servers to setup log shipping. You can set it up with just one single SQL Server instance. In an HA solution this wouldn’t make sense but technically it’s possible.
Having a separate server acting as the monitoring server ensures that when one of the server goes down, the logging of the actions still takes place.
Having a separate network share for both the backup and copy makes it easier to setup security and decide which accounts can access the backups. The backup share needs to be readable and writable by the primary instance and readable by the secondary instance.
The copy share needs to be accessible and writable for only the secondary instance.
Part two is all about checking the status of a log shipping implementation:
Monitoring your log shipping processes is important. You need the synchronization status of the log shipped databases.
The log ship process consists of three steps; Backup, Copy and Restore. The log shipping tracks the status for these processes.
It registers the last transaction log backup, the last file copied and the last file restored. It also keeps track of the time since the last backup, copy and restore.But that’s not all. Log shipping also checks if the threshold for the backup and restore has been exceeded.
Log shipping is an underrated piece of the HA/DR puzzle, and Sander shows how easy dbatools makes it to configure.