The case:
- An industrial IT system, controlling and storing data on two production lines
- There is one server per production line. Each server runs the automation objects for that production line. Each server has a local SQL server database that stores data for that production line.
- The automation software has built-in redundancy. A server failure on one production line's server will cause the automation objects to run on the other server instead.
An imagined scenario: The disk controller on production line 1's server fails. Currently, the following will happen:
- The automation objects will start running on production line 2's server instead.
- But when the automation objects start doing data access to server 1, they will of course fail (since the disk controller is non-functional).
So we have discussed options. A colleague has suggested the following:
- Replicate the server 1 database on server 2. And vice versa.
- Set up the data access with localhost connection strings.
- So when the automation objects start running on the other server, their data access will go to the database on the server they are running on.
I do not have experience with replication. Is replication a viable solution to the problem described above? Important things to remember when setting up replication? Other suggestions?