Disaster Recovery Solution for SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machine

Recommendation for Disaster Recovery Solution

Question

You have SQL Server on an Azure virtual machine. The databases are written to nightly as part of a batch process.

You need to recommend a disaster recovery solution for the data. The solution must meet the following requirements:

-> Provide the ability to recover in the event of a regional outage.

-> Support a recovery time objective (RTO) of 15 minutes.

-> Support a recovery point objective (RPO) of 24 hours.

-> Support automated recovery.

-> Minimize costs.

What should you include in the recommendation?

Answers

Explanations

Click on the arrows to vote for the correct answer

A. B. C. D.

D

Replication with Azure Site Recover:

-> RTO is typically less than 15 minutes.

-> RPO: One hour for application consistency and five minutes for crash consistency.

Incorrect Answers:

B: Too slow.

C: Always On availability group RPO: Because replication to the secondary replica is asynchronous, there's some data loss.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/site-recovery/site-recovery-sql

Based on the requirements mentioned in the question, the recommended solution must meet the following criteria:

  1. Provide the ability to recover in the event of a regional outage.
  2. Support a recovery time objective (RTO) of 15 minutes.
  3. Support a recovery point objective (RPO) of 24 hours.
  4. Support automated recovery.
  5. Minimize costs.

Among the four options provided, Azure Site Recovery (ASR) is the best choice for a disaster recovery solution that meets all the requirements.

Here's why:

A. Azure virtual machine availability sets: Availability sets are used to ensure that virtual machines (VMs) are distributed across multiple physical servers to protect against single points of failure. However, they do not provide disaster recovery capabilities like failover and recovery to another region.

B. Azure Disk Backup: Azure Disk Backup is a service that allows you to create backups of your virtual machines' disks. While it can be used for disaster recovery, it does not provide the level of automation required to meet the requirements in the question.

C. Always On availability group: An Always On availability group is a high-availability and disaster recovery solution that provides automatic failover to a secondary replica in the same or a different data center. It can meet the RTO and RPO requirements, but it requires more resources and higher costs compared to other options.

D. Azure Site Recovery: ASR is a disaster recovery solution that enables replication of virtual machines to a secondary location, such as another Azure region or an on-premises site. ASR also provides continuous replication, which ensures that data loss is minimized. ASR provides the ability to automate failover and recovery, which meets the requirement for automated recovery. Additionally, ASR is a cost-effective solution as it charges based on the amount of data being replicated and the number of virtual machines being protected.

In summary, the recommended solution for a disaster recovery solution that meets the requirements mentioned in the question is Azure Site Recovery.