SQL Server 2008 is a thing of beauty. Also, it has native date field type. Be careful though, if you are using T-SQL and want to use the date field type you have to use the SQL Server Native Client 10.0 and you can't use varchar(max), you have to use Text fields which will eventually be deprecated.

Hmm, I'd be very interested to know what caused you to go your own route, was it to get better control, was it to get better performance, etc.

I wanted more granular control of when the cache would be updated.

I've maintained a "hot spare" web server up to this point but it would still require me to do the hot swapping. This hasn't been necessary <knock on wood>, primarily because we revamp everything at least every 2 years. This time, the revamping's going to be a bit more involved though :)

This is really the biggest advantage. The ability to automatically and seamlessly failover with SQL Server 2008 mirroring (which requires a 3rd computer which acts as a witness). I spent years afraid to go out of town for fear of a hardware failure. I'm not immune now, but I'm certainly way better off than I was before.

We've had this setup in a test environment before. My first thought when seeing it running with 3 servers was, "what happens when your witness fails" :)

Thanks for all the feedback. I'll be sure to give some updates as we move to the farm.