BIT introduces MS-SQL instances

BIT introduces MS-SQL instances

26-08-2014 15:37:11

The End-of-Life (EOL) of Microsoft SQL 2005 SP4 and the diminishing support for updates was a good occasion to revise the MS-SQL services that BIT offers. Now a high availability cluster will be used instead of a standalone SQL Server. In addition to individual databases and full private MS-SQL servers that have already been offered, we now expanded the services with MS-SQL instances.

This new platform consists of two new Fujitsu servers with Windows 2012 Failover Clustering. Next to the improvement in performance, we also offer this arrangement with a higher availability. In case of disruptions there will be automatically switched to the partner node in a different location.

Microsoft SQL Server licenses are quite expensive, and for customers with a small or medium sized environment relatively large costs. This new platform offers space for 50 Microsoft SQL Server instances. Each instance is a full Microsoft SQL Server which operates on its own and where the administrator has full access to his environment.

Each SQL Instance is completely isolated from other SQL instances in where the data on our NetApp Metro Cluster is distributed across two locations. Backups are also automatically stored separately on a remote backup server in two different locations.

Customers pay a flat fee for this service with additional costs for storage and memory usage. In this product backup, monitoring and licenses are included. By sharing resources and licensing, costs are much lower than in the event that the customer has to set up their own server or virtual machine.

Customers who have a web space on the shared hosting platform from BIT can now use a database on a Microsoft SQL Server 2008 or Microsoft SQL Server 2012. Customers with a database on the old Microsoft SQL Server 2005, already have been ported to the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 in the past few weeks. The old server is herewith phased out immediately.