SQL Server 2000 Consolidation: a business case

Why do companies need consolidation?
Large organizations can have hundreds of applications and thousands of databases serving the needs
of the business. As a simplified example, the following figure illustrates a typical database server
environment at a fictional company, ConsolidateMe.com, which has multiple applications that use
SQL Server databases—each one located on a separate physical server. These applications include:
HR application—on server A
Operations and accounting applications—on server B
Reporting and statistical applications—on server C
Figure 1. The database server environment at ConsolidateMe.com
How did ConsolidateMe.com arrive at such scaled-out architecture? As the business grew, new
applications were deployed on separate commodity servers. Due to the low entry cost associated with
2-CPU or 4-CPU commodity servers, ConsolidateMe.com placed its emphasis on scaling out rather
than scaling up.
As the transaction volume increases within each of these applications, the workload is spread over
several database servers. Quickly, ConsolidateMe.com finds itself managing hundreds of SQL
servers. Though the initial cost of buying each server is low, the total operational cost of the large
number of database servers grows significantly higher over time, influenced by the following factors:
Building, upgrading, and patching a large number of servers
Problem identification and resolution
Server monitoring costs
Server hosting costs
Storage requirements for backups and restores
8