Overview and implementing sql server high availability solutions

The paper presents the concepts related to the design of high availability solutions for Microsoft SQL (MS SQL) Server database servers. MS SQL Server from version 2012 offers a new capability called AlwaysOn which is aimed at reducing downtime of servers or databases during a failure. It includes several mechanisms such as Failover Cluster Instances, Availability Groups, Database mirroring, Log shipping. The paper presents the implementation of some of these concepts in our prototype. We also compare these mechanisms focusing on their aptitude in contemporary information systems.