Connections to a SQL Server database mirroring session

If you are using database mirroring in Microsoft SQL Server, you can provide connection information for both the principal and mirror server connections for the source data used for your services. This is given in the format <principal>;MIRROR=<mirror>.

Using a database mirror for your service's source data can avoid downtime for your services. If the principal server becomes unavailable, ArcGIS for Server retries the connection automatically. At that time, if the mirror server is available, the service's connection will switch to using the data on the mirror server.

Different scenarios for specifying a data mirror are described in the following sections:

Publisher and server machines are using the same database

If the GIS resource you share as a service uses the same database as the published service, and that database is mirrored, provide instance information for both the principal and mirror server in the Instance field of the shared database connection.

For example, if you create your connection from the Database Connection dialog box in ArcGIS for Desktop, your principal server is oak\prod, your mirror is oak2\echo, and the databases are datasquared, the connection would look similar to the following:

Publisher and server machines are using different databases

If your GIS resource and your published service will use different databases for their source data (either replicated geodatabases or a managed database), you will have two separate database connections defined. To ensure high availability for your service, be sure that the connection file defined for the publisher uses the mirroring syntax already described.

For example, if your feature service will point to data that is copied to your managed database gisdata, which is on server willow and mirrored on server cottonwood, your registered geodatabase connection would look similar to the following:

Because this example uses default SQL Server instances, you could provide the IP address for each server instead of the SQL Server instance name. For example, if the IP address for willow is 10.10.100.10 and the IP address for cottonwood is 11.11.111.11, type 10.10.100.10;MIRROR=11.11.111.11 in the Instance text box. If either of the SQL Server instances is listening on a port other than the default database engine port of 1433, include the port number in the connection information. For example, if the willow instance is listening on port 50000, type 10.10.100.10:50000;MIRROR=11.11.111.11 in the Instance text box.