Chapter 9: Configuring Always On High Availability Features
SQL Server high availability includes two main components called Always On Failover Cluster Instances and Always On Availability Groups. In this chapter, we will look at these two in depth and explore possible configurations for the SQL Server environment. Both features use Windows Server Failover Cluster (WSFC) functionality but have different methods of deployment.
WSFC is a server feature available on Windows Server, which allows the grouping of computers into a fault-tolerant cluster. In a case where one or more nodes fail, others will keep the service or application available.
Each Windows Server version brings new features to the WSFC feature and many of those can be beneficial for SQL Server deployment. Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 have brought many new enhancements and new features to WSFC, with a strong emphasis on the Hyper-V role used for virtualization. The main new features and improvements...