Hybrid scenarios

Taking what you've learned from this book up to this point, including the earlier parts of this chapter, you can start to build a picture in your mind of how SQL Server on an Azure VM can help you with creating a hybrid solution at any scale.

Whether for read-scalability, migration, or disaster recovery, you can run your on-premises SQL Server instance on Windows Server and have the same workload in SQL Server on an Azure VM at the same time.

Keep in mind that with Software Assurance, the free passive SQL Server replica can be used to synchronize with your primary replica (using asynchronous commit and manual failover) and run these maintenance operations:

• Database consistency checks
• Full and transaction log backups
• Monitoring resource usage data

Additionally, you can run disaster recovery testing every 90 days with primary and disaster recovery replicas running simultaneously for brief periods.

Should you desire additional operations...