We recently experienced a failure on our prime data server. Due to this failure our server needed to be restarted and this took about a half our. But that was only part of the problem of course: data loss, client with no access, workers out of work and so on. It took the rest of our day to completely fix it.
What brings me to the question:
Is it possible to set up a second server witch is a shadow of the main and can it be configured to take over in case of a failure on the first?
Is it best practice to go virtual or get a second physical one?
We are running on server 2008R2 with a 2005 sql, the hardware is HP proliant DL380 G6.