db setup help - new guy

Hey everyone
I'm brand new to the scene, and lucky me, I get to support a 24x7 database, with very little help. Here is what I got.

2 servers, exactly the same, running Windows 2000 Server PIII 1GHz CPUs, 1GB SDRAM, 2x18GB HDD (RAID1), 2x36GB HDD (RAID1)

How should I set up my database? Everything has to be fault tolerant. If one server fails, the other will ideally kick in without any interruption to service. How should it be partitioned? the database must be on the 36gb drive. what about transaction logs? Load balancing would be nice. what about Advanced Replication? How about ongoing maintenance? what do I do? what tools can I use? log file creation, sutff like that. quest software?

If anyone's interested in helping me out, that would be great. This database has been up for 8 months now. Oh yes, this rebuild of the database architecture, minimal downtime would be preferable. Is there any way to set up a server to work in parallel with my existing server, then migrate users to the new server, blow away my old server, and reconfigure that to work in parallel with the new server? (confused?) Or I could rebuild a server, take the database, export the data then import it into the new database (approx. 2 hours downtime). It's quite fragmented right now, so would like to find a plan quick!!

is this enough questions? if not, please feel free to probe me for more questions!!
awong_at_htp.bcit.ca
enjoy!! Received on Sat Jan 12 2002 - 22:23:15 CET