Posted On: Mar 30, 2021

Amazon RDS for SQL Server now offers Always On Availability Groups for the Multi-AZ configuration in all Amazon Web Services Regions on Standard Edition. This new high availability option meets the requirements of enterprise-grade production workloads on SQL Server.  

The Multi-AZ deployment option provides enhanced availability and data durability by automatically replicating databases between two Amazon Web Services Availability Zones (in the same region). These Availability Zones offer you an easier and more effective way to design and operate applications and databases, making them more highly available, fault tolerant, and scalable than traditional single-datacenter infrastructures or multi-datacenter infrastructures.

When you create a SQL Server database instance using the Multi-AZ configuration on the latest SQL Server 2019 version for the Standard Edition database engine, Amazon RDS automatically provisions a primary node in one Availability Zone and maintains a synchronous "standby" replica in a different Availability Zone using AGs. In the event of planned database maintenance or unplanned service disruption, Amazon RDS automatically fails over the SQL Server DB instance to the up-to-date standby so that database operations can resume quickly.

If you are already on an version that supports AGs in the Multi-AZ configuration, you will need to first convert the DB instance to the Single-AZ availability type, and then re-apply the Multi-AZ flag.

Please visit the Amazon RDS for SQL Server User Guide to learn more.

Amazon RDS for SQL Server makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale SQL Server deployments in the cloud. See Amazon RDS for SQL Server Pricing for pricing details and regional availability.