As organizations accelerate cloud adoption, ensuring high availability (HA) while managing costs has become a central challenge. In a conversation with Swapnil Bhartiya, Dave Bermingham, Senior Technical Evangelist at SIOS Technology, outlined key architectural strategies for balancing performance, resilience, and budget.

Bermingham advises organizations to rethink their licensing assumptions. “Using SQL Server Standard Edition with SIOS DataKeeper gives you failover clustering without the high licensing and storage costs,” he said. By avoiding the costlier Enterprise Edition—required for Always On Availability Groups—companies can build highly available solutions with more budget flexibility.

Over-provisioning is a common cost trap. Bermingham emphasized that “right-sizing your infrastructure” is essential. Tailoring VM size and storage to actual workload needs prevents unnecessary spend, while still meeting performance benchmarks.

For cloud-native HA, spreading deployments across multiple availability zones ensures resilience. “That setup can qualify you for four nines of availability in the cloud,” Bermingham explained. This architecture minimizes downtime without the financial overhead of full cross-region setups.

When the threat model includes region-wide outages, cross-region replication becomes necessary—but it comes at a premium. “You have to consider the expense of replicating that data outside the region,” said Bermingham. He advocates aligning HA/DR strategies with both business priorities and realistic budgets.

Conclusion
Cloud HA doesn’t have to be cost-prohibitive. With smart software choices, disciplined infrastructure sizing, and strategic deployment, organizations can design systems that are both resilient and affordable. SIOS Technology’s approach offers a viable path for enterprises seeking four nines uptime without four times the cost.