Mythbusting: SQL Server isn’t reliable

I started this series of posts talking about scalability and now I’ll talk about reliability. This is another IT term that might have different meanings to different people. For the sake of this post, I’ll assume that reliability means that the server is up and running when you want it to be.

99.999% uptime good enough? That translates to about 5 minutes downtime a year!

We have case studies of SQL Server deployed in a high-availability environment so that it will be up when it’s needed. Fujifilm and Nasdaq Stock Market are two examples.

There’s also barbox, who have a website for online trading. The company’s business has grown rapidly and the website updates every week. The whole environment needs to be up and running constantly or they lose business. Their website is the definition of business critical to barbox. And it’s built on a SQL Server environment.

So there are companies putting business critical applications on a SQL Server infrastructure and experiencing uptime on a five 9s level. Sounds reliable to me.

Myth: busted!