Transactional versus Merge Replication (Restore backup after downtime)

Question

I have the following transactional replication setup:

Windows Server 2008 with SQL Server 2008 Enterprise

Server A: Master, has a database with a table, publisher
Server B: Slave, subscriber (Backup server)

For backup (and read only access to B during down time), transactional replication is a good solution. However, during downtime of A, I want the application to read and write to the database on B. It is possible to backup B and restore the content to A, but is a merge replication a better way?

Answer 1

for backup purposes I would implement database mirroring. if read access is required then using database snapshots could help.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms175511.aspx

i believe that merge replication would work to eliminate the need to backup/restore from B to A, but the performance penalty would be considerable. if the base is small then it would be fine.