Case Study: Skyscanner achieves 9x faster Microsoft SQL Server search performance with SanDisk Fusion ioMemory

Skyscanner Send Microsoft Sql Server Search Performance Soaring

Skyscanner, a leading travel search site that compares millions of flight prices, faced growing performance and reliability problems as its Microsoft SQL Server–based database layer became a bottleneck. Rapid business growth and spiky workloads led to slow query response times, frequent server rebuilds, poor scalability for holiday traffic, and rising costs — all while the company wanted to avoid risky software re-engineering.

Skyscanner deployed SanDisk Fusion ioMemory (ioDrive) cards to replace traditional disk storage, dramatically improving random I/O for their write-heavy workload. The change cut average query time from 9 seconds to 1 second (9x faster), consolidated 12 servers and 196 disks into 4 servers with 12 ioDrives, delivered a 40.5x performance-density improvement, eliminated frequent failures, and reduced licensing, power, cooling, rack space, and maintenance costs while enabling reliable, scalable handling of traffic spikes.

Skyscanner

Phil Dalbeck

Infrastructure Architect