Microsoft included ScaleArc in the day’s agenda because our database load balancing software makes it possible for apps to automatically leverage the benefits of modern SQL – SQL Server 2012, 2014, and 2016 platforms with the AlwaysOn functionality and other scale out benefits. The combination of ScaleArc and SQL Server enables better application resiliency that you can get even with Oracle RAC.
How? The ScaleArc software enables database failover to be completely invisible to the application, or customers. It works with database failover techniques and queues inbound transactions while a new primary is being promoted. As a result, apps or customers see delay but not errors.
Plus, ScaleArc enables applications to access all the goodness of SQL Server AlwaysOn feature set with no application changes. Without ScaleArc, you need to program read intent strings into the app for read queries to go to secondary database servers. With ScaleArc, you avoid all code changes, because the ScaleArc software supports:
- automatic read/write split
- failover that’s transparent to the app
- zero downtime maintenance
So what was the big revealing moment last week? One event had 42 customers in the room. I asked for a show of hands for who was running which SQL Server versions, back to 2000. About 20 folks were already on SQL Server 2012 and 2014 – and two had even played with early versions of SQL Server 2016. Then I asked, of those 20 customers, who was using readable secondaries – how many hands up? Just one.
Wow – dozens of customers on AlwaysOn and only one really using it.
We see this reality play out all the time – enterprises have a lot of challenges leveraging scaled out databases. ScaleArc solves that problem – making it automatic for all your apps to leverage the distributed architecture of today’s modern data platforms.