SIOS Technology Corp. (www.us.sios.com), maker of SAN and #SANLess clustering software products, today announced the results of its premier SQL Server High Availability survey of large corporations in the United States (76%) and Europe (9%). The survey elicited responses from 191 IT professionals across a wide range of vertical industries to understand current trends and challenges related to providing high availability (HA) and disaster protection (DR) for SQL Server.

Specific areas covered by the survey, included identifying the most important challenges to providing HA and DR; understanding the costs of HA and DR for SQL Server; and determining the plans and priorities for 2014/2015.

The following are key findings based on the survey results:

• Improving SQL Server performance is a top priority for 43 percent of respondents.
• Rising costs are a significant challenge for SQL HA and DR. The most important challenges (rated significant or somewhat problematic) to providing HA and DR for SQL were: the rising cost of SQL licensing (71 percent), the cost of SAN storage
  (68 percent), SAN configuration limitations (69 percent).
• Licensing costs have risen sharply since the introduction of SQL 2012. For nearly one third (30 percent) of respondents, licensing cost increases were either significant (20-30 percent increase annually) or dramatic (>30 percent annually).
• SQL Enterprise Edition for HA and DR. The reason most companies (68 percent) purchased SQL Server Enterprise Edition instead of more cost-effective SQL Server Standard Edition was for HA and DR features.
• Shared storage (SANs) slowed SQL performance for more than half of respondents (51 percent).
• Need for flexibility. Most respondents (73 percent) want flexibility to use any type of storage as part of a cluster configuration without the limitations of a SAN.
• SQL in the cloud. Nearly half (47 percent) of respondent would run SQL in the cloud provided that they have failover cluster protection.

“In today’s enterprise SQL Server environments traditional shared storage adds significant cost, often causes slow SQL performance, and limits configuration flexibility, making them impossible or impractical in cloud, hybrid cloud and high performance storage environments,” explained Jerry Melnick, COO of SIOS Technology Corp.  “Companies should consider SANLess cluster solutions that not only eliminate the cost of SAN hardware and administration, but also provide HA and DR protection in the cloud, high performance SSD and mixed environments.”

For more details, interested parties can download the full survey report here:  http://discover.us.sios.com/asset-reg-whitepaper-sql-server-high-availability-survey-2014.html

About SIOS Technology Corp.

SIOS Technology Corp. makes SAN and #SANLess software solutions that make clusters easy to use and easy to own. An essential part of any cluster solution, SIOS SAN and #SANLess software provides the flexibility to build Clusters Your Way^™ to protect your choice of Windows or Linux environment in any configuration (or combination) of physical, virtual and cloud (public, private, and hybrid) without sacrificing performance or availability. The unique SIOS #SANLess clustering solution allows you to configure clusters with local storage, eliminating both the cost and the single-point-of-failure risk of traditional shared (SAN) storage.

Founded in 1999, SIOS Technology Corp. (www.us.sios.com) is headquartered in San Mateo, California, and has offices throughout the United States, United Kingdom and Japan.

# #

SIOS, SIOS Technology, SIOS DataKeeper, SIOS Protection Suite, Clusters Your Way, and associated logos are registered trademarks or trademarks of SIOS Technology Corp. and/or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

# # #

Contact:

Beth Winkowski
Winkowski Public Relations, LLC for SIOS
Phone: 978-649-7189
Email: bethwinkowski@US.SIOS.com