How do I maintain two copies of an ArcSDE database in a SQL Server instance?

Question

I want to maintain two identical copies of an --unversioned-- ArcSDE database in the same SQL server instance (a QA and a production database). ESRI documentation notes that you cannot rename a SQL server database when copying it. What is the recommended way to make a scheduled copy of an ArcSDE SQL Server database in a single instance?

I have access to the full range of SSMS tools and SSIS as well as ArcInfo license, ArcPy and ArcEngine.

dcoley · Accepted Answer

Conor-

You can do that, but the databases cannot be named the same.  Its a lot of work and isn't really well designed for sde repositories, but you can use sql database replication if you must have both data sets un-versioned. But unless you have some business logic or exclusionary use case requiring both databases to contain un-versioned data, then I would set up one-way data replication between a parent edit database and a child production database, where the child database contains the un-versioned data.

Thanks

David