Databases Synchronization – best practice

Question

We have live and stand-by database servers. Both are SQL Server 2008 databases and hosted on Windows Server 2003.

May I know the best practice that people follow to synchronize the 2 databases (live and stand-by) so that we could make sure the stand-by server up whenever the live server is down for any reason.

It would be great if you could also provide a reference document or web references (if needed).

Answer 1

From the MS SQL Server 2008 "High Availability—Always On" page

For a list of solutions...

All solutions are used somewhere. We use clustering for example.

Answer 2

We do something similar using Replication Services(within SQL Server).

Startup guide can be found here.