Can two servers access the same database files? I'm designing an application and considering some options regarding the database system since I'm not familiar with Microsoft SQL Server. I would like to know if it's possible to have 2 servers sharing the same files, as shown below.



The idea is that the data is in a raid system so it would grant us some safety. This way we would save effort in synchronizing both databases and save some money on storage. We only need one database at a time, the secondary is just for use in case of failure of the first.

Is this possible? 

I'm open to different approaches. The main problem is the database redundancy, our application must guarantee that.

At the moment I'm using Windows 7 and SQL Server 2008R2.
It is possible for two separate servers to simultaneously access a shared read-only database. The feature is known as Scalable Shared Databases.

From your description, it sounds more like you need a failover cluster, not a shared read-only copy.