Database HA & DR

For a corporation, every minute of downtime can result in a significant loss of revenue, which is why business leaders rank business continuity as one of their top IT goals. To protect business processes from downtime and data loss, it is necessary for corporations to implement a High Availability (HA) and a Disaster Recovery (DR) plan.

In brief, a failover option is offered by SQL Server high availability (HA) in the case that a control room service, server, or database fails. The goal here is to maintain the availability of a service or system and 100% UPTIME through redundant and fault-tolerant components at the same location to make sure there is no data loss and no interruption in the service to your customers.

 

On the other hand, Disaster Recovery (DR) provides a recovery solution in the event of a disaster (e.g., fire, regional power outage, network outage) that causes an entire data center to fail. It helps address the need for service continuity and to minimize downtime through redundant & standby site(s) in a distinct location. Typically in such a case, getting your business BACK ONLINE and running again is the top priority.

Both, High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) share a similar goal of keeping your systems up and running! However, HA will address problems while your system is running and DR will address problems if the infrastructure or systems completely fail.

 One of the most pressing questions that organizations have to address is, “How long can we afford to be down?” It is reasonably estimated that every minute of downtime can equate to thousands lost in revenue. Accordingly, to ensure minimal data loss and downtime, it is vital that enterprises have a fully documented disaster recovery plan.

Fortunately, there are several solutions and technologies available right now that can assist you in implementing High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) plans and reduce the effect of unplanned interruptions. Some of the common solutions include:

Failover Clustering

Log Shipping

Backup/ Restore

Replications

Always ON availability groups

Automatic Recovery of Corrupted pages

Azure Shared Disk Clusters

Database Mirroring

Given the variety of solutions available today, it is first vital to understand your business requirements in terms of business continuity and cost. Depending on your unique needs, InstoWiz experts can help design and execute the right solution(s) for you to keep your data safe and your business up and running!