When setting up a MICROSOFT SQL SERVER 2005 Database Mirror setup for High Availability you may run into an issue where the databse Mirror fails over automatically from the principle to the mirror when there wasn't ever really an issue.  This can be caused by random network issues, response delays, etc...  There is an easy solution that is not part of the GUI that can help reduce or eliminate these "false positives" that cause the server quorom to trigger a failover.<!--more-->

Configure the database mirror PARTNER TIMEOUT SETTING.

To configure this use the Transact SQL command  "ALTER DATABASE DBNAME SET PARTNER TIMEOUT 30".  By setting the partner timeout to a greater number you allow more time for network issues, delays, etc... to work out before the other servers trigger the failover.  Setting the value too high will cause the server to delay the failover and could result in more downtime so fine tuning will be required.   Also, The minimum value for this setting is 5 seconds.