Hi,

I want to introduce myself, I am Tommy and I am 32 year Network Engineer from
PA. I am dipping into some SQL stuff that I have never dipped into before
and I have some questions. Any feedback is much appreciated.

I currently have a DB server, SQL2005 and I am beginning to see some
performance issue due to our clientele growing so rapidly and the database
server is just getting hit to hard. I have another SQL server, exact replica
of my main DB server, and would like to setup load balancing or clustered
environment so the DB1server doesn't get hit so hard. I'd like to have the
traffic segregated onto two servers instead of one.

I am using Microsoft load balancing in my web environment and it works great
can I do the same with my SQL db servers?


Any thoughts?

Ragards,
Tommy

Short answer is No.

Long answer is that your webservers are stateless. All persistent
information is held outside of the box. That persistent information is held
in SQL Server. SQL scales UP, not out. Clustering in the Microsoft world
refers to a failover technology, not a scale-out technology. There are ways
to handle scale-out, but they are not an out-of-the-box solution. All
require some degree of application modifications to be aware of the new
database infrastructure.

The exception is where the SQL data is read-only. Then multiple copies can
be created since there is no updating to deal with.

SQL performance problems can be handled by adding hardware resources,
improving the indexing, fixing the queries, or refactoring the database
correctly. Usually it is a combination of several of those that actually
solve the problem.

--
Geoff N. Hiten
Principal SQL Infrastructure Consultant
Microsoft SQL Server MVP





"tommypa" <u46176@uwe> wrote

Short answer is No.

Long answer is that your webservers are stateless. All persistent
information is held outside of the box. That persistent information is held
in SQL Server. SQL scales UP, not out. Clustering in the Microsoft world
refers to a failover technology, not a scale-out technology. There are ways
to handle scale-out, but they are not an out-of-the-box solution. All
require some degree of application modifications to be aware of the new
database infrastructure.

The exception is where the SQL data is read-only. Then multiple copies can
be created since there is no updating to deal with.

SQL performance problems can be handled by adding hardware resources,
improving the indexing, fixing the queries, or refactoring the database
correctly. Usually it is a combination of several of those that actually
solve the problem.

--
Geoff N. Hiten
Principal SQL Infrastructure Consultant
Microsoft SQL Server MVP





"tommypa" <u46176@uwe> wrote

Short answer is No.

Long answer is that your webservers are stateless. All persistent
information is held outside of the box. That persistent information is held
in SQL Server. SQL scales UP, not out. Clustering in the Microsoft world
refers to a failover technology, not a scale-out technology. There are ways
to handle scale-out, but they are not an out-of-the-box solution. All
require some degree of application modifications to be aware of the new
database infrastructure.

The exception is where the SQL data is read-only. Then multiple copies can
be created since there is no updating to deal with.

SQL performance problems can be handled by adding hardware resources,
improving the indexing, fixing the queries, or refactoring the database
correctly. Usually it is a combination of several of those that actually
solve the problem.

--
Geoff N. Hiten
Principal SQL Infrastructure Consultant
Microsoft SQL Server MVP





"tommypa" <u46176@uwe> wrote

Short answer is No.

Long answer is that your webservers are stateless. All persistent
information is held outside of the box. That persistent information is held
in SQL Server. SQL scales UP, not out. Clustering in the Microsoft world
refers to a failover technology, not a scale-out technology. There are ways
to handle scale-out, but they are not an out-of-the-box solution. All
require some degree of application modifications to be aware of the new
database infrastructure.

The exception is where the SQL data is read-only. Then multiple copies can
be created since there is no updating to deal with.

SQL performance problems can be handled by adding hardware resources,
improving the indexing, fixing the queries, or refactoring the database
correctly. Usually it is a combination of several of those that actually
solve the problem.

--
Geoff N. Hiten
Principal SQL Infrastructure Consultant
Microsoft SQL Server MVP





"tommypa" <u46176@uwe> wrote

Short answer is No.

Long answer is that your webservers are stateless. All persistent
information is held outside of the box. That persistent information is held
in SQL Server. SQL scales UP, not out. Clustering in the Microsoft world
refers to a failover technology, not a scale-out technology. There are ways
to handle scale-out, but they are not an out-of-the-box solution. All
require some degree of application modifications to be aware of the new
database infrastructure.

The exception is where the SQL data is read-only. Then multiple copies can
be created since there is no updating to deal with.

SQL performance problems can be handled by adding hardware resources,
improving the indexing, fixing the queries, or refactoring the database
correctly. Usually it is a combination of several of those that actually
solve the problem.

--
Geoff N. Hiten
Principal SQL Infrastructure Consultant
Microsoft SQL Server MVP





"tommypa" <u46176@uwe> wrote

Short answer is No.

Long answer is that your webservers are stateless. All persistent
information is held outside of the box. That persistent information is held
in SQL Server. SQL scales UP, not out. Clustering in the Microsoft world
refers to a failover technology, not a scale-out technology. There are ways
to handle scale-out, but they are not an out-of-the-box solution. All
require some degree of application modifications to be aware of the new
database infrastructure.

The exception is where the SQL data is read-only. Then multiple copies can
be created since there is no updating to deal with.

SQL performance problems can be handled by adding hardware resources,
improving the indexing, fixing the queries, or refactoring the database
correctly. Usually it is a combination of several of those that actually
solve the problem.

--
Geoff N. Hiten
Principal SQL Infrastructure Consultant
Microsoft SQL Server MVP





"tommypa" <u46176@uwe> wrote

Short answer is No.

Long answer is that your webservers are stateless. All persistent
information is held outside of the box. That persistent information is held
in SQL Server. SQL scales UP, not out. Clustering in the Microsoft world
refers to a failover technology, not a scale-out technology. There are ways
to handle scale-out, but they are not an out-of-the-box solution. All
require some degree of application modifications to be aware of the new
database infrastructure.

The exception is where the SQL data is read-only. Then multiple copies can
be created since there is no updating to deal with.

SQL performance problems can be handled by adding hardware resources,
improving the indexing, fixing the queries, or refactoring the database
correctly. Usually it is a combination of several of those that actually
solve the problem.

--
Geoff N. Hiten
Principal SQL Infrastructure Consultant
Microsoft SQL Server MVP





"tommypa" <u46176@uwe> wrote

Short answer is No.

Long answer is that your webservers are stateless. All persistent
information is held outside of the box. That persistent information is held
in SQL Server. SQL scales UP, not out. Clustering in the Microsoft world
refers to a failover technology, not a scale-out technology. There are ways
to handle scale-out, but they are not an out-of-the-box solution. All
require some degree of application modifications to be aware of the new
database infrastructure.

The exception is where the SQL data is read-only. Then multiple copies can
be created since there is no updating to deal with.

SQL performance problems can be handled by adding hardware resources,
improving the indexing, fixing the queries, or refactoring the database
correctly. Usually it is a combination of several of those that actually
solve the problem.

--
Geoff N. Hiten
Principal SQL Infrastructure Consultant
Microsoft SQL Server MVP





"tommypa" <u46176@uwe> wrote

Short answer is No.

Long answer is that your webservers are stateless. All persistent
information is held outside of the box. That persistent information is held
in SQL Server. SQL scales UP, not out. Clustering in the Microsoft world
refers to a failover technology, not a scale-out technology. There are ways
to handle scale-out, but they are not an out-of-the-box solution. All
require some degree of application modifications to be aware of the new
database infrastructure.

The exception is where the SQL data is read-only. Then multiple copies can
be created since there is no updating to deal with.

SQL performance problems can be handled by adding hardware resources,
improving the indexing, fixing the queries, or refactoring the database
correctly. Usually it is a combination of several of those that actually
solve the problem.

--
Geoff N. Hiten
Principal SQL Infrastructure Consultant
Microsoft SQL Server MVP





"tommypa" <u46176@uwe> wrote