Writer: David P. Smith (ServiceU Corporation)

Contributors: Ron Talmage (Solid Quality Mentors); Sanjay Mishra, Prem Mehra

Technical Reviewers: James Podgorski, Mike Weiner, Peter Carlin

Published: August 2009

ServiceU Corporation, based in Memphis, Tennessee, is a leading provider of online and on-demand event management software. Our software services are used by churches, schools, universities, theaters, and businesses to manage events such as concerts and conferences as well as online payments. We have customers in all 50 states of the United States and in 15 countries worldwide.

Our software services are built and deployed using the Microsoft® Application Platform, including the Microsoft .NET connection software, the Microsoft SQL Server® 2008 database software, and the Windows Server® 2008 operating system. The Microsoft Application Platform helps us provide a seamless user experience and maximum availability of our applications to users. The applications use both the Software as a Service (SaaS) model and the Microsoft Software + Services architecture.

From a security standpoint, we maintain Payment Card Industry (PCI) Level 1 compliance to protect credit card holder and Automated Clearing House (ACH) information. (Details of our PCI Compliance are not covered in this case study.)

Achieving maximum availability and near immediate recovery from a disaster is essential for maintaining our revenue stream. We have worked hard to eliminate all single points of failure in our architecture, and we have developed procedures for patching servers, upgrading software, and implementing application changes that preserve high availability. Based on these efforts, we have achieved 99.99 percent uptime, including both planned and unplanned downtime.

This case study examines the decisions that we made and the procedures we employed to maintain maximum availability with minimal downtime. This information will be of interest to senior IT managers, project leads, architects, and database administrators (DBAs).

For more information, please refer to the whitepaper High Availability and Disaster Recovery at ServiceU: A SQL Server 2008 Technical Case Study.