I am thinking of having total hardware redundancy by having two identical servers(win2k3, SQL Express). Is this the best way of providing totaly hardware redundancy?

The idea being that the second server would only be used if the first one developed a hardware fault. I haven't decided on how to backup the drives yet (which is clearly key to the solution - I'd probably use a disk mirror AND another internal disk for backup of the mirror), but I'd probably intend to restore any backup data to the second server, or perhaps rescue at least one of the mirrored disks from the first server and slot it into the second.

Anyway, the question I have is about Microsofts licensing. Clearly, the second server wouldn't actually be generally in use, and only one copy of Windows server would be actually 'live' at any one time.

If I was to opt for the method of pulling a hard drive from server 1 and putting it in server 2 , then I'd have to sort out activation for the OS as it would stop working as soon as it picked up a different motherboard/processor.

I am doing this the best way? Or is there a way around all this? I guess I need to know if its gonna be the cost of two complete systems, even of one is held in reserver for the other, with all its software installed (if that was the method).


Thanks,

JJ

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