Scenario

As the cloud becomes more and more widely used and the options for SQL Server continue to evolve, more SQL Server shops are looking at using cloud based services such as Azure and Amazon as a valid option for their high availability (HA) failover clustering and offsite disaster recovery (DR) solution. It is important to understand the levels of SQL protection needed in your organization and to match those levels with the right HA/DR option. Evaluate your options in terms of: ability to meet recovery time (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO); hardware and software cost; and ease of use.

Once you define your protection needs, you need to decide whether you need HA, DR, or both. In an HA environment, operation of your application moves from a primary server to a standby server in the event of a failure. The failover may be within the same data center or to a remote data center for disaster recovery protection. DR can also mean replicating applications and data to a remote site and restoring it if there is a problem on the primary server or even complete site loss.

Setting up a remote failover site can be confusing because SQL Server offers so many options, including: log shipping, replication, database mirroring, AlwaysOn Failover Clustering and AlwaysOn Availability Groups.

Solution

The following sections summarize the factors to consider and provide an overview of various options for HA and DR in cloud based SQL Server deployments. Continue reading Hybrid High Availability and Disaster Recovery in SQL Server →