SQL Server 2005 provides a set of high availability methods that the users can use to achieve fault tolerance and to prevent server outages and data loss. The selection of the high availability method depends on various factors. Some DBAs need the servers to be available 24/7, while others can afford an outage of a couple of hours. Cost also plays a role in the selection. For example, Clustering is an expensive high availability method when compared to Database Mirroring, but it allows the user to failover immediately.