Working on setting up a new SQL server 2012 Standard box, we are only licensed for 4 cores with SA. Putting this on a new Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V 2 node cluster. Was considering making use of fail over cluster instances with shared vhdx to allow SQL to still be accessible during Windows and SQL updates by failing over to the other node as needed. Was planning to make use of Hyper-V replica for the rest of our VM's to one of our remote sites but understand there are a few caveats for SQL server looking at KB956893. So I was thinking of using Database mirroring or log shipping to our remote site so we wouldn't have to worry about issues with Hyper-V Replica. Manual fail over to the remote site would be sufficient.
Reviewing the SQL Licensing it appears you are only covered with one passive copy of the database, which means that we couldn't do SQL failover cluster instances and Database mirror (or log shipping) all together? I guess I would be more concerned about having a good copy of our data offsite and deal with the disruptions from Windows updates if we are unable to combine technologies.
Just wanted to check that I was understanding this correctly? Any thoughts or comments are greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Greg