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As you have seen in this chapter, you must keep in mind many things when designing a SQL Server system. Unfortunately, it is not possible for anyone to simply tell you how to design your system. Even if you design systems for many companies, you will seldom end up with similar results because each company has its own needs and requirements.
This chapter covered several key points. You must assess the uptime requirements of your company and develop a design that will meet those requirements. This might mean multiple data centers, clustering, RAID I/O subsystems, or replication. In addition, the scalability and performance requirements of your system will influence its overall design. As you have seen in this chapter, you have a variety of options. Finally you should design the application with performance in mind. This foresight will result in a system that does not slow down as the data set grows and the number of users increases.
In the next chapter, many of the topics introduced in this chapter will be expanded. Chapter 5 will also teach you how the I/O subsystem works, what performance and fault tolerance issues you should consider, and how to plan and configure an optimal I/O subsystem.