May 30, 2014 at 1:04 pm
We currently have a DR solution in which both the machine name and the instance name of the secondary are different from the primary. For example, the primary has a name like the following:
ProductionServer\Instance_Name
The secondary name would then be:
DRServer\Instance_Name_DR
Is there any advantage to the DR instance name being different from the Production instance name? Is there any disadvantage to it?
The only reason I've been able to offer for the different instance name on the secondary is the occasion of a mistake in a connection string during a test in DR accidentally pointing a DR application to Production or vice versa, resulting in a mixing of DR Testing data and Production.
June 1, 2014 at 1:45 pm
Hello,
One of the advantages for using the same instance name that I can think of is that if you're using DNS CNAME (or some other IP/name aliasing option) in your client connection strings. In this scenario if your primary SQL Server goes down you can redirect the clients to DR instance just by changing the CNAME (or that whatever other option) to point to your secondary SQL Server without needing to touch the client connection strings.
Of course if you're actually concerned about clients connecting to wrong instance, then you should definitely use different instance name and change the connection strings manually.
June 2, 2014 at 3:27 pm
The advantage being proposed was the DNS alias, but we've since reasoned that using the IP in the alias and [Alias, Port] in the connection string would accomplish the same thing without a dependency on matching instance names.
Thanks.
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