We have a large database 200GB+ to which we added a second log file to cater for growth during an upgrade. This is now no longer needed so we want to remove it. Normally this would be a simple ALTER DATABASE <blah> REMOVE FILE <filename> statement.
However our database is log shipped to a secondary for reporting, so the question is - will removing this file break log shipping?
Server is SQL Server 2005 SP3 Standard Edition if it has any bearing.
Removing the extra file won't give you any problems.
You are shipping backups of logs, not the actual ldf files. Since the backup mechanism would punt if the restore targets were different, I think you have a risk and would probably need to reinit log shipping. Found these notes. You'd have to halt shipping and manually apply the tran log WITH MOVE to avoid a likely reinit otherwise.
As for a possible work-around, you could empty log contents into other files, and then shrink the log to the smallest possible size. That should work but you'd have a tiny lingering file. Make sure to checkpoint/backup before you try.
