Sql Server Mirror over Internet

Question

Ok, I'm gonna get some weird looks for this, but It's something I want to do. I have two servers on the internet, I want to open an internet port just for each others IP, and do a SQL Server 2008 mirror over the internet.

The data isn't that important. No SS#, no credit cards, nothing like that. So this doesn't have to be overly complex.

1) Is mirror blocking? I don't want the primary server to be waiting on the secondary server to commit the data. Will it queue up stuff to synchronize? The DB is big, and there is a lot of activity, if it has to wait for it to sync up on the secondary, this wont work?

2) Even though security is not a huge concern, what are the flaws? The SQL DBs will only be open externally to each other, and is there any danger of sniffs?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

If you have SQL Enterprise Edition, you can use Asynchronous Mirroring, which is non-blocking. If you don't, you may want to investigate Log Shipping.

Configuring certificate-based transport-level encryption would minimize the risk of information disclosure. Note that transport encryption is enabled by default.

Database Mirroring Transport Security
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms186360.aspx

How to: Allow Database Mirroring to Use Certificates for Outbound Connections (Transact-SQL)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms186384.aspx

Answer 2

SQL Mirroring supports an asynchronous mode. Make sure that you are using IPSec or some other VPN technology to protect against sniffing.

Answer 3

1) No idea about SQL Server. However, most major RDBMS' have options that will tailor the replication/mirroring for many different scenarios and tastes. Read the docs.

2) Any data that travels unencrypted over the internet could be sniffed. What you need is a VPN. Try OpenVPN. Works on Windows too.