protix (8/20/2014)
GilaMonster (8/19/2014)
How many transactions/sec are you talking here? What hardware? What are your current bottlenecks?
About 500/sec long term average and 1500/sec peak, the bigger part reading.
Hardware is on on the upper limit of x86, 40 cores, 1 TB RAM.
That hardware should be able to handle the load you've mentioned with space to spare (lots of space)
To give you a point of comparison, Stack Overflow, using a single SQL Server, does on the order of 500 000 transactions/sec during peak hours
Unless you have obvious signs that the server is not coping with the workload and there are no tuning opportunities, I'd stop worrying about hardware and look elsewhere.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability