I'm not sure if anyone here is that experienced with SQL Server, but since we can identify random vegetables, perhaps someone here has the knowledge I need. I am not very experienced with databases myself beyond the typical programmer SQL stuff.

Our production setup is that our databases are all mirrored, and then in our apps they have the mirror identified as a failover partner in the connection string. I didn't know that you can do this, but you can and it works, for the most part. Well, it works if you bring down the app and bring it back up again when the primary server goes down. This isn't so great for services- we don't want to have to go restart everything if a database goes down. The idea is that everything should keep right on trucking, just pointing at the mirror instead of the primary. What we've observed is that if you bring the primary down, the apps do not find the mirrored database unti they are restarted. I'm looking into why this is, but if anyone more knowkedgeable than me has info, I'd greatly appreciate the help.