Architectural options for ensuring high availability and disaster recovery in SQL Server

Architecturally speaking, what’s the difference between configuring SQL Server for high availability (HA) and configuring it for disaster recovery (DR)? The terms HA and DR are so often paired that one might imagine them to be the same -- when in fact they are distinct approaches to mitigating different risks. Let’s start by distinguishing the risks. Let’s say your mission critical SQL Server infrastructure resides in a datacenter in Orlando, Florida. It doesn’t matter whether it’s your own data center, a co-location facility, or a cloud data center. A category 5 hurricane causes a catastrophic failure of the data center… [Continue Reading]