Log Shipping is one of the oldest forms of High-Availability Strategy inside SQL Server. The concept here is the primary database on the server is backed up and restored on one or more servers as secondary’s. After this step, transaction logs are restored from the primary onto the secondary over a periodic interval defined.

Database mirroring provides a redundant copy of a single database that is automatically configured to update the changes. Database mirroring works by sending transaction log records from the main principal database to the mirror server. The transaction log records are then replayed on the mirror database continuously. Some of the differences include..

• A log shipping secondary can also be set to allow read-only access to the database in between transaction log restore operations.
• The log shipping process is controlled through SQL Server Agent jobs that perform the backups, copies, restores and monitoring.
• Database Mirroring can detect failures automatically. Even automatic page repairs are possible.
• With Database Mirroring failovers can also be automated.