Log shipping is probably the least complicated and easiest to configure of the various methods of creating a secondary copy of your database.

Here’s a basic overview of the process.

• Take a full backup of the primary database.
• Restore the database in the secondary location, leaving it in either recovering or standby mode.
• Take log backups of the primary database.
• Copy those log files to the server the secondary instance is on.
• Restore the log files to the secondary continuing to leave it in recovering or standby.

So first a few questions for you to either answer or research:

• Can I leave the secondary in a readable state? If so how?
• If the secondary is left in a readable state is it always readable? If not when is it not readable?
• What are some drawbacks to this method vs say Mirroring or Availability Groups?
• What are some benefits?
• Think about how you might set this up manually, at least in a general sense.

Now I want you to try this:

• Pick a database and open the log shipping properties. (5 pts)
• Add a secondary. (5 pts)
• Review options on each of the tabs. (15 pts)
• Configure the Initialize Secondary Database tab. (15 pts)
• Configure the Copy Files tab. (15 pts)
• Configure the Restore Transaction Log tab. (15 pts)
• Review the jobs created. (15 pts)

As an example of what you might see here is a real world set of requirements I had recently.

• There will be a full restore once a week, Sunday night/Monday morning. This will be handled by a different process.
• A backups (full, differential, and log) are handled by a separate process.
• The secondary is on the same server as the primary.
• The log restores should only happen once a day at 2am.

For the remaining 15 points configure a log shipping solution with those requirements.