your post is pretty generic. Are you saying you have two databases - running on the same SQL Server - that you want to have running at the same time? If so, An Active/Passive cluster of 2 nodes will work fine - and is the cheaper of the 2 scenarios you mentioned. Of course, this doesn't take into account how big your db's are - what kind of volume is hitting them - you might want to go Active/Active - one database on each node - that will be more expensive - since you'll have to buy 2 copies of Enterprise Edition SQL - regardless, you can still do it with just the two nodes - in this case, 4 nodes would probably be overkill. We're currently serving 2 db's on an Active/Passive setup - works well, very reliable, not difficult to setup or manage. Hope this helps?

Nick DeAngelo

Scientific Games