Creating a high performance mirrored pair w/ no witness and need to verify that the primary never goes offline due to mirroring

Question

Hello,

I am going to test mirroring but I can't exactly recreate a prod environment.  I want to verify:
-If I setup a high performance mirrored pair with no witness I can 'break' mirroring without taking the primary offline.

-Can I just do a 'restore database [mirrored db name] with recovery' on the mirrored pair to make it accessible?  I figure I'd have to somehow recreate mirroring on the primary, correct?

Essentially I want to be able to test mirroring when it's in production and break it, then just recreate it without having any impact whatsoever on prod.  I viewed the MCM videos on mirroring and read the technet articles but did not find an answer to this, and I'm afraid something might happen in prod that I can't recreate in test, thus I come to the experts.  Thanks!

Answer 1

Hi!

1) Yes, you can break, suspend, or whatever the mirror without affecting the primary, as long as the mirror is Async ("High Performance")

2) Yes, after breaking the mirror you can just issue a RESTORE WITH RECOVERY to get the DB Online.

3) To reestablish the mirror after doing the WITH RECOVERY you have to drop the secondary database and again restore it from a backup of the primary. Mirrors can only be established on databases that are in NORECOVERY. This will also not cause any impact on your Primary whatsoever, neither does the reestablish of the mirror itself.

Lucifer

Answer 2

Thanks Prince of Darkness for shedding light on the subject!