HoTMaN (HoT-standby MaNager) is a joint research and development project between MySpace and USC Database Laboratory to design and develop a tool to ensure a 24x7 up-time and ease administration of Terabytes of storage that sits underneath hundreds of database servers. The HoTMaN tool's innovation and uniqueness is that it can, with a few clicks, perform operational tasks that require hundreds of keyboard strokes by "trusted trained" experts. With HoTMaN, MySpace can within minutes migrate the relational database(s) of a failed server to a hot-standby. A process that could take over 1 hour and had a high potential for human error is now performed reliably. A database internal to HoTMaN captures all virtual disks, volume and file configurations associated with each SQL Server and candidate hot-standby servers where SQL server processing could be migrated. HoTMaN is deployed in production and its current operational benefits include: (i) enhanced availability of data, and...