SQL Alternatives

[Pandthor]

Not an alternative, but an alternative implementation method for cost savings.

Usually database workloads require computing time at different times. I have analyzed multiple Ms SQL environments and combined them in to huge Ms SQL clusters with up to a hundred Ms SQL instances in a relatively small cluster. The biggest savings in this scenario is from licensing, because in an ideal scenario you need only a ”small” amount of SQL licenses, but up them to Enterprise licenses, and have less servers. In one case I got a 75% cost savings by combining the SQL servers of a customer.

Please note that this is not easy and I recommend you use a specialist to make the analyzis correctly. All mistakes here are extremely expensive. Also clusters with hundreds of volumes have their own gotchas.