On Wednesday we hosted a webinar to walk our customers, partners, and consultants through one of the most significant infrastructure changes we've made in years: the sunsetting of the old Database Mirroring service and the introduction of our new Replication service.
We were thrilled to see over 120 people registered, and the engagement during Q&A was fantastic. Thank you to everyone who joined, and especially to those who asked such sharp and thoughtful questions — they made the session genuinely better for everyone.
Why are we making this change?
The old mirroring solution was built on WCF and .NET 4.8, technology Microsoft stopped supporting years ago. Beyond the technical debt, it had real security limitations: it required inbound connections, X.509 certificates with long-lived credentials, and you had to host a public web service endpoint near your database. Some of our largest customers, including DNB, raised serious concerns about running it in its current form.
The new solution flips the model entirely. Your client connects outbound only — no inbound firewall rules, no certificates to manage, no IIS to maintain. Authentication uses short-lived tokens with automatic rotation, and setup takes minutes rather than days.
What's new — and how fast is it?
During the live demo, Ludvig showed the entire setup from scratch: downloading the client from the Operation Center, configuring a connection string, running the provisioning command, and installing it as a Windows Service. The whole process took only a few minutes.
The speed difference is striking. The old service pushed data in batches every approx 20 minutes. The new Replication service syncs changes in 1–7 seconds. We saw this live during the demo — a new company created in SuperOffice appeared in the replica database within seconds.
Real-world experience: How we migrated our own environment
Jarle walked us through how SuperOffice migrated our own internal SuperOffice installation to the new service. His approach — setting up the new database in parallel, running both side by side, then doing a rename switch — meant that none of the existing BI tools or integrations needed their connection strings updated. A practical tip worth borrowing.
He also recommended excluding very large tables you don't need, like the message table, to speed up the initial replication. For large databases, the first full sync can take several hours, so planning this outside working hours is a good idea.
Key Q&A highlights
The questions were excellent, and here are some of the most important answers:
Will my custom fields and extra tables be replicated? Yes — the new service replicates everything the old one did, including extra tables, and respects the same exclude list you've configured in admin.
Can I run old and new mirroring side by side? Yes. We recommend this approach for migration. Just remember to stop the old mirroring service before going live with the new one to avoid error message floods.
When will the old service stop working? The old mirroring will stop working when we migrate the platform to Azure, which is planned for after summer, before Christmas. We don't have an exact date yet, but we encourage everyone to start migrating as soon as possible.
What if the service goes down? Changes are kept in the queue for 7 days. If your client has been down for less than 7 days, it will automatically catch up when it reconnects. If it's been down longer, reach out to support.
Is a cloud-native/container option coming? Not yet — but it's on the roadmap. We're working on a container-based solution, with Kubernetes as the first target. We hear the demand and are actively working on it.
What you should do now
The new service is live today. If you have a mirroring license, you can log into the Operation Center, find the Replication widget, and download the client right now.
- If you're on Visma, you can start immediately
- If you're on Azure or online.superoffice.com, please give us a heads up first so we can ensure you're on the right database platform and can scale resources for your initial sync
Documentation on docs.superoffice.com is being updated — in the meantime, setup guides are available in the community pilot forum.
The recording from the webinar is posted on Youtube. If you have follow-up questions, post them in the forum and we'll make sure they get answered.
Thanks again to Jens, Ludvig, Jarle, and Frode for an excellent session — and to all of you for making the Q&A so lively. See you at the next one.