Query Load Balancing

Hi,

We have a massive database that users run complex queries on. The queries are never the same so caching cannot be used too much effect. When many queries are run at one time by the various users the system slows down.

What we are trying to achieve is maybe have a primary SQL Server 2005 machine and multiple (4-5) SQL Server 2005 secondary machines. The primary machine would get the query and would decide based on loads as to which secondary machine would fulfill the query.

We are not worried about failover and clustering and all that fun stuff. Our primary concern is to achieve the quickest execution of the query. We were wondering if SQL Server 2005 has any feature that enables query load balancing of some kind.

Thanks

Sounds to me that you should seriously investigate replication.

Now your comment "The primary machine would get the query and would decide based on loads as to which secondary machine would fulfill the query." is not addressed by SQL Server out of the box, but you could maybe design some custom code.

My main point here is that I would NOT recommend looking at database mirroring for your solution. Mirroring is primarily a failover/hot standby solution for availability.

Thanks,

Mark