Prerequisites for Configuring Log Shipping

1.  SQL Server 2005 or later
2. Standard, Workgroup or Enterprise editions must be installed on all server instances involved in log shipping.  Express Edition doesn’t supports SQL server Logshipping.
3. The servers involved in Log Shipping should have the same case sensitivity settings.
4.   Database being log shipped must be in Full recovery model or Bulk logged recovery model. The simple recovery model is not supported.

5. A shared folder for copying T-Log backup files
6. SQL Server Agent Service must be configured properly
7. Both SQL & OS Editions and Versions should be at same level on all participating servers.
8. The user who configures the Logshipping must be member of sysadmin server role.
9. SQL Server and SQL Server agent services must be configured under windows authentication account with sysadmin permissions on all participating server.
10. Recommended to have unique logon account for both SQL Server and SQL Server agent services.
11. The Logon account must have at least local administrator privileges to carry out the administrative tasks.
12. SQL Server port (1433) must be opened at network level for communication between the both servers.
13. Sharing ports must be enabled on both production & DR servers for log shipping.
14. Create shared network share on both Primary and secondary servers.
15. The backup and restore directories in your log shipping configuration must follow these requirements.
16.  SQL service log on accounts must be same on both Environments.
17. Should not run any maintenance plan or backup job against log shipped databases since that would break Logshipping chain.
18.  Logshipping configuration can be done with in trusted domain computers or work group computers.
19. Recommended to have the same Drive Space capacity in fact more space of secondary server considering the data growth in future.
20. Ensure you do not hardcode your server name in your application connection connecting the databases. Create in such way that you can switch easily to the database servers and take advantage of log shipping.

For the backup job, read/write permissions to the backup directory are required on the following:

·         The SQL Server service account on the primary server instance. 

·         The SQL Server Agent account on the primary server instance. 

·         For the copy job, read permissions to the backup directory and write permissions to the copy directory are required by the service account of the copy job. By default, this is the SQL Server Agent account on the secondary server instance.

For the restore job, read/write permission to the copy directory are required by the following:

·         The SQL Server service account on the secondary server instance. 

·         The SQL Server Agent account on the secondary server instance.