Question

A company is migrating a mission-critical SQL Server 2019 workload to Azure IaaS. The application requires automatic failover with minimal data loss if a single database instance fails, and the solution must support read-scale offloading of reporting queries to a secondary replica. Compliance rules mandate that the database remain on SQL Server (not a PaaS offering) to preserve full instance-level control. Which solution best meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Deploy a SQL Server Always On availability group across multiple Azure VMs placed in different availability zones, with synchronous-commit replicas and automatic failover

Answer

Deploy a single SQL Server VM with Azure Backup configured for application-consistent snapshots every 15 minutes

Answer

Migrate to Azure SQL Managed Instance with a Business Critical service tier and zone redundancy enabled

Answer

Deploy two SQL Server VMs using SQL Server log shipping with a 5-minute log backup and restore schedule