Suspend All Transactions for a Split-Mirror Backup Strategy?

We currently use a split-mirror backup strategy for our Sybase database, which has a "quiesce database" command to suspend all transactions. By quiescing the database before splitting the mirror, we suspend all transactions to ensure we get a stable backup of the environment. It works very well for us and I'm trying to understand how we could implement this with our SQL Server 2005 DB.

(I'm aware of SQL Server mirroring and that there are other ways of possibly backing up the DB. In this post however, I'm only interested in how I would make the split-mirror strategy work if I wanted to pursue it. I'm trying to avoid paying for software that uses the VDI as it's quite costly.)

Can someone help me with how I would accomplish a split-mirror backup strategy in SQL Server 2005 (without using a vendor's software that uses the VDI) I have to imagine there's something similar to the "quiesce database" command in SQL Server...

I appreciate the help!

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Suspend All Transactions for a Split-Mirror Backup Strategy?

Mr. Ahmad
I'm moving this thread to the mirroring forum, where it should get more attention.

Paul
Tom Robins

Wrong forum, but I just had a meeting with the backup/restore PM. And it does get more visibility here. Me.

Here are your options:

1. Use the third party tools. They go through a lot of developement to provide good functionality.

2. Download the VDI specification and build the backup/restore app yourself (this is where the freeze/thaw documentation is). I would NOT recommend this. From point 1, you can see that small industries are built on supplying backup/restore functionality.

3. Wait for a QFE that is in the works that will provide a simple VSS snapshot for everything (including SQL) on the box.

Thanks,

Mark
Suspend All Transactions for a Split-Mirror Backup Strategy?

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