I did not get much response last time, so I thought I might try again. I am investigating the means to have a 'hot' backup site, where, if the primary site goes down, the backup site (not local) will pick up with little or no time / intervention. When the primary site comes back on-line, it should get updates from the backup site, and then be able to be promoted back to its primary status.

My area of investigation of this is with SQL Server (2005). My understanding is (so far) that:

1) Replication does not meet the needs, because it can't capture all areas of the database (stored procedures, tables w/o index, views, etc.).

2) Log shipping does not meet the needs, because it requires intervention at each switch, and perhaps a few hours of down time (depending on the people, etc.).

3) Mirroring does not meet the needs, among other things, because it is not recommended for commercial use (i.e. it is not ready??).

Am I missing something here? Do I understand these correctly? If so, it would seem the only 'hot' backup site solutions would be non-SQL server, and perhaps only 3rd party solutions. All help is very much appreciated.