I was at a bbq party last night, and one my close friends, a senior lead
developer with tons of MS certs from MCSD to MCSE and author of a Microsoft
book, told all of us that, "Microsoft SQL Server **does not** scale beyond 2
servers pointing to the same database".

This was a complete shocker to me. Is he correct?

We're building an app that needs to scale up as the demand increases. It
will probably be set up regionally with several SQL servers on the US East
and West coasts and China, and they all need to use the same database.

Is my friend right in saying that MSSQL cannot have more than 2 servers
pointing to the same database? He said Oracle on Linux would be a better fit
for our project.

Or is there some way to have these regional servers share the same database?

SQL Server 2000 installed on a Windows Server 2003 cluster can run on 4
nodes. Though, a database will only run on one server at a time (technically
its the instance that run only on one machine at a time).

See http://www.microsoft.com/usa/webcasts/ondemand/1751.asp for more
information

So 4 servers (8 servers with 64 bit support) can point to the same database,
but only 1 at point can use it. Hopefully that makes sense.

Cheers,

Rod

MVP - Windows Server - Clustering
http://www.nw-america.com - Clustering

"Scott" <nospam.scott (AT) scottkeen (DOT) com> wrote

I am not sure exactly what your asking by this statement: "several SQL
servers on the US East
and West coasts and China, and they all need to use the same database".
SQL Server is a relational database server application. It is pretty much
an all inclusive app meaning that the database(s) are all owned by one SQL
server. You don't have SQL Server running on a server in Atlanta that owns
a database running on another Server in Chicago. With the exception of
using Distributed Partitioned Views a single SQL Server hosts one or more
databases on the same server as itself. Now don't take that to mean you can
not have other Servers (including SQL Server) connected to it. There are
plenty of SQL applications out there that have literally thousands of users
all over the world. I have personally worked on SQL Servers that handles
thousands of transactions per second, many Terabytes of data and thousands
of users. So you need to be a little clearer on exactly what you mean by
not scaling.

--
Andrew J. Kelly SQL MVP


"Scott" <nospam.scott (AT) scottkeen (DOT) com> wrote

Thanks for the replies.

The concern was raised by the Linux guy in our dev group. I'm a developer,
not a DBA, however I'm responsible for making recommendations on what
technology we need to use for the app.

The Linux guy says, "Microsoft products don't scale well as demand
increases". Broad-sweeping comments like that are very dangerous for the
project, and I need to have my facts right when I make my technology
recommendations to management.

The concern is with what I've been told will be about tens of thousands of
users around the globe (mostly from China and the US coasts) hitting the
database at the same time with complex updates and selects. The concern is
that if SQL Server starts to bog down, then we should be able to throw on
more hardware to spread the load of the requests coming in and going out.

What can we do, so that as the demand on the database increases we'll be
able to throw hardware at the problem to distrubute the load?

Thanks,
Scott



"Andrew J. Kelly" <sqlmvpnooospam (AT) shadhawk (DOT) com> wrote

SQL Server scales much better up than out. By that I mean you don't add
more servers but more processors, memory etc. If you really think you will
be in a situation where you will have to support thousands of users you
should be looking at hardware in the Unisys ES7000, HP Superdome range. You
can even get them in 64 Bit and they will scale up to 32 and 64 processors
with as much ram as you need. There are already a lot of people at or
beyond that level with SQL Server and with the proper hardware and PLANNING
it should not be a problem. If you have people who lack vision and have
never done something of this scale you may want to seek outside advise to
ensure it is a success. If you bring in a 4 proc box now and tomorrow it
can't handle the load you might indeed have to replace the hardware
altogether...

--
Andrew J. Kelly SQL MVP


"Scott" <nospam.scott (AT) scottkeen (DOT) com> wrote