(SQL) Tip of the Day: Active Geo-Replication

Today’s (SQL) Tip…

GeoDR or Geo-Replication allows you to have an active replica of your database on a different logical server or different region all together. The article sums it up the best:

The Active Geo-Replication feature of Microsoft Azure SQL Database implements a mechanism to provide database redundancy within the same Azure region or in different regions (geo-redundancy). Active Geo-Replication asynchronously replicates committed transactions from a database to up to four copies of the database on different servers. The original database becomes the primary database of the continuous copy. Each continuous copy is known as an active secondary database. The primary database continues to asynchronously replicate committed transactions to each of the active secondary databases. While at any given point, the active secondary data might be slightly behind the primary database, the active secondary data is guaranteed to always be transactionally consistent with changes committed to the primary database.

One of the primary benefits of Active Geo-Replication is that it provides a database-level disaster recovery solution. Using Active Geo-Replication, you can configure any user database to replicate transactions to databases on different SQL Database servers within the same region or in different regions. Cross-region redundancy enables applications to recover from a permanent loss of a datacenter caused by natural disasters, catastrophic human errors, or malicious acts.

You can read more here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/azure/dn741339.aspx