This isn't a technical problem to be solved with shards, plus you do not want to have to answer those questions if something goes wrong (e.g. security). What s

This isn't a technical problem to be solved with shards, plus you do not want to have to answer those questions if something goes wrong (e.g. security). What specifically did you ask for when you say "they are not willing to help out to make things more reliable"? If the corporate DB has 90% uptime then you need to tell your boss and internal customers that the max limit of uptime is that 90% figure. If that is not acceptable then your manager needs to deal with the db team manager. I am a little confused on how an old DB only rates 90% since mainframes and iSeries boxes are way above that. How modern your application environment is or how crufty the enterprise db is irrelevant to any talks between teams.