Hello,

I've been a Microsoft product user and developer for the
longest time, but this time my boss has realized that the
only way to scale Microsoft SQL is to throw lots of
hardware at it. Also, he thinks SQL lacks horizontal
scalability. On top of that, case studies like the one
provided in this link just emphasize that SQL does not
scale without using costly hardware..

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/c...s/casestudy.as
p?CaseStudyID=10802

So my question to you guys is how do you horizontally
scale SQL while keeping redundancy?


Finally, we are seriously considering OpenLDAP and a Linux
distributed file system. We already hired the Linux
hackers to do the job on not so costly hardware...


ps: Linux is spreading..

Could you clarify what you mean by horizontal scalability?

Linchi

Do you mean that you want to know if SQL Server have some
Database Load Balancing features??? Like Oracle 9iRAC???

Cesar Kubo

Besides load balancing , redundancy | clustering, how can
SQL scale without having to add more CPUs to a single
server? I will have to look into 9iRAC and compare..

With MSSQL I have to keep adding hardware and more
hardware to a single machine. THat's a single point of
failure. That DOES NOT scale...

Horizontal scalability allows me to just keep adding low
cost servers to the farm hopefully sharing the same data.
That flies..

Microsoft AFAIK does not offer horizontal scalability at
all..


I like Microsoft, but I need a solution..

ps: Linux is spreading..

Microsoft calls that scale-out. But scale-out only applies
to databases of certain characteristics, and most often is
not as simple as just adding another server. Typical scale-
out scenarios include: (1) partitioning workload with
distributed partitioned views, and (2) offloading
reporting work to a different server via replication or
even log shipping. If your database is read only, you do
have the option of using a farm of SQL Servers and taking
advantage of dynamic load balancing among these servers.

Often, it's much simpler to scale up. You can eliminate a
single-point of failure by using server clustering and
storage RAID.

Linchi

Do ask the question of how much Oracle 9iRAC is being used
in real world serious applications.

Linchi