We are a small division of a larger company and we are required to keep a server at the corporate office as a disaster recovery server. I want to use SQL's (2005) transaction log shipping feature to keep the offsite server up-to-date.
The problem is that Mama Corprorate wants proof that the database is functional. For example, a screenshot of the remote session showing a query of the orders table showing the most recent group of orders (with the order date). Is there a way to satisfy this requirement without breaking the log shipping? I suggested that I give them a screen of the history for the LS Restore job, but they didn't like that idea since "that really isn't telling you that its working" according to them.
Thanks!
From the videos above from Bogdan Sahlean, I changed the database mode from NORECOVERY TO STANDBY and that has resolved the issue. This allows us to still run the same query as evidence.