Maintaining high service availability, low response time and easy scalability is mission-critical for many applications and services including e-commerce, social media, gaming, finance and telecommunications. This white paper discusses the requirements, evaluation criteria and alternatives for datacenter managers who need to deliver mission-critical services using MySQL databases. It examines the limitations of today's traditional MySQL offerings. It discusses SchoonerSQL and its dramatic impact on enabling truly mission-critical use of MySQL, and compares SchoonerSQL to the other alternatives.