title: Suggestions of alternative database to Sql Server 2008
body: <p>I run a fairly successful adult website running on Asp.Net (c# 4.0) with a Sql Server 2008 R2 backend.  We are running the free (Express) version and are getting close to our 10gb data limit.  We have around 100k members and receive over 7 million page impressions (750K unique visitors).</p>
  
  <p>I'm looking at free (or cheap) alternatives as we cannot afford the USD$7K+ that Microsoft are charging for their processor license for the standard edition.  There's not much hope of us getting a free license either on their biz spark program!</p>
  
  <p>We have a fairly typical schema for any membership database.  We are moving towards a more social aspect, so think of an adult Facebook. We currently have 42 tables in our database.  I'm conscious of the issues of scale.  We have been growing at a drastic rate so are considering a NoSql alternative.</p>
  
  <p>So, I'm considering Postgres and RavenDB.  Postgres would have the least amount of friction in terms of code change and data migration.  However, if we were to become Facebook (lolz) then I would end up writing the data layer again (which makes me sad).  </p>
  
  <p>So maybe start out now with a NoSql solution such as RavenDb or Mongo which has sharding built in.</p>
  
  <p>Thoughts?</p>