Hello everyone: I hope this is the appropriate forum for this question.
I am a long running programmer who has recently started assisting our dba group due to reduced staff.
We recently implemented AOAG for a sql server of substantial size with with the help of a contractor; however there is a conflicting understanding in the group of how it should be maintained from this point.
It is a simple 2 node (primary and secondary) arrangement, with synchronous syncing, with a 3rd server that acts as the "witness" (quorum).
- Another contractor in the group believes that the two nodes communicate by means of reading and writing from .bak (backup) files he wants to keep on the witness (quorum) server; he has recently requested more space to house .bak files there for every database on it, and is convinced that without these files the two nodes are not actually syncing.
The implementing contractor, on the other hand, has explained that the .bak files were only necessary for the initial synch and can now be removed if desired, as the primary and secondary nodes sync by a process called "log shipping"; the witness server merely watches (listens if you will?) to see if fail-over is necessary.
Explanation #2, I would like to confirm. As for #1, I have not been able to confirm, and will create more complications with the amount of space we have available for other maintenance tasks.
Thank you in advance!
P.S. I've tried reading the (rather abstract) Microsoft documents on the subject but I'm still learning.