Case Study: NHS Choices achieves zero-downtime maintenance and improved site performance with ScaleArc

NHS Choices Chooses ScaleArc for Better Site Uptime and Performance

NHS Choices, the UK National Health Service’s public-facing website with over 50 million monthly visits, was struggling with database performance and availability as traffic and legacy front-end processes grew. Running a mixed SQL Server environment on Azure, the NHS Digital team faced recurring performance degradation, disruptive maintenance windows, and complex failover for older mirrored deployments.

After testing ScaleArc’s database load‑balancing software, NHS Digital deployed it on Azure to add caching, read/write splitting, and automated load balancing without changing application code. The result was immediate: faster response times, higher uptime with zero‑downtime maintenance and upgrades, seamless failover during outages, on‑demand scaling, and real‑time analytics for quicker troubleshooting.

NHS Choices

Paul Houghton

Technology Delivery Manager