SQL Server 2005 Mirroring Failover

One of our customers uses SQL Server 2005 and mirrors a database between two locations.

Twice now our customer has performed a manual failover using the following commands (run at the secondary/mirror location):

• ALTER DATABASE (NAME) SET PARTNER OFF (breaks the mirror but still says recovering...)


• RESTORE DATABASE (NAME) WITH RECOVERY (returns the DB to a usable state & removes the recovering... status)

This evening we discovered a magical button that up to now had gone overlooked, FAILOVER.  Using this button you can immediately swap the roles between the mirror and the principal databases.