Azure SQL Microsoft Managed Failover Question

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Azure SQL Microsoft Managed Failover Question

Internetlag 0

Hello,

I was wondering if I delegate my Azure SQL instance to 'Microsoft Managed' within my failover group, will I still be able to force a failover AND normally failover at my discretion, or have I effectively left both for Microsoft to do? I want to ensure that both are still available to me while having this option enabled.

SSingh-MSFT 16,371 Reputation points Moderator

2024-08-27T07:18:11.42+00:00
Hi Internetlag •,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum.

As I understand, you want to know if Azure SQL database failover is Microsoft Managed, then will you still be able to do a force failover.

Setting your failover policy to customer managed is highly recommended, as it keeps you in control of when to initiate a failover and restore business continuity. You can initiate a failover when you notice an unexpected outage impacting one or more databases in the failover group.

Set the failover policy to Microsoft managed only when:

You want to delegate disaster recovery responsibility to the Azure SQL service.

The application is tolerant to your database being unavailable for at least one hour or more.

It's acceptable to trigger forced failovers some time after the grace period expires as the actual time for the forced failover can vary significantly.

It's acceptable that all databases within the failover group fail over, regardless of their zone redundancy configuration or availability status. Although databases configured for zone redundancy are resilient to zonal failures and might not be impacted by an outage, they'll still be failed over if they're part of a failover group with a Microsoft managed failover policy.

It's acceptable to have forced failovers of databases in the failover group without taking into consideration the application's dependency on other Azure services or components used by the application, which can cause performance degradation or unavailability of the application.

It's acceptable to incur an unknown amount of data loss, as the exact time of forced failover can't be controlled, and ignores the synchronization status of the secondary databases.

All the primary and secondary database(s) in the failover group and any geo replication relationships have the same service tier, compute tier (provisioned or serverless) & compute size (DTUs or vCores). If the service level objective (SLO) of all the databases don't match, then the failover policy will be eventually updated from Microsoft Managed to Customer Managed by Azure SQL service.

When a failover is triggered by Microsoft, an entry for the operation name Failover Azure SQL failover group is added to the Azure Monitor activity log. The entry includes the name of the failover group under Resource, and Event initiated by displays a single hyphen (-) to indicate the failover was initiated by Microsoft. This information can also be found on the Activity log page of the new primary server or instance in the Azure portal.

For more details refer:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql/managed-instance/failover-group-sql-mi?view=azuresql

Use case for Microsoft Managed Failover is:

A widespread outage in a datacenter, availability zone, or region causes unavailability of databases and the Microsoft Azure SQL service team decides to trigger a forced failover. Use this option only when you want to delegate the disaster recovery responsibility to Microsoft and the application is tolerant to RTO (downtime) of at least one hour or more.

Hope this helps.

Let us know if you have more queries.

Thanks
Internetlag 0 Reputation points

2024-08-27T13:32:53.64+00:00

Hi, I read that documentation but it does not directly answer the question. Im looking for a direct answer. If I have that option enabled, can I still force and normally failover my database.
Internetlag 0 Reputation points

2024-08-27T13:34:21.2133333+00:00
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Sayanti Chowdhury 0 Reputation points

2024-08-27T13:48:04.2233333+00:00
When you delegate your Azure SQL instance to 'Microsoft Managed' within your failover group, you are allowing Microsoft to manage certain aspects of the high availability and disaster recovery processes. However, this delegation does not remove your ability to manually initiate failovers.

Here’s what you need to know:

1. Manual Failover Control

You retain the ability to force a failover manually within your failover group. This means you can still initiate a failover at your discretion, regardless of the delegation to 'Microsoft Managed'.

You can perform a manual failover using the Azure portal, PowerShell, CLI, or the REST API.

2. Automatic Failover

With 'Microsoft Managed' enabled, Microsoft will automatically handle failovers in response to certain failure conditions. This ensures high availability and disaster recovery are managed efficiently without requiring manual intervention.

Automatic failover will occur based on the health of the primary region and the failover policies you've configured.

3. Operational Flexibility

Enabling 'Microsoft Managed' does not remove your ability to manage the failover group. You still have control over other operational aspects, such as adjusting the failover policies and deciding when to initiate a manual failover.

Both automatic failover (managed by Microsoft) and manual failover (initiated by you) can coexist. This setup ensures that you have the flexibility to control your environment while benefiting from Microsoft's management for increased reliability.

4. Best Practices

Even with 'Microsoft Managed' failover, regularly test your failover processes by manually initiating failovers to ensure they work as expected and that your applications can handle the transition smoothly.

In summary, delegating your Azure SQL instance to 'Microsoft Managed' within your failover group will not restrict your ability to manually force a failover. Both options remain available, giving you the flexibility to manage failovers as needed while benefiting from Microsoft's automated failover capabilities.

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Internetlag 0 Reputation points

2024-08-27T13:32:53.64+00:00

Hi, I read that documentation but it does not directly answer the question. Im looking for a direct answer. If I have that option enabled, can I still force and normally failover my database.
Internetlag 0 Reputation points

2024-08-27T13:34:21.2133333+00:00

``

Answer 1

SSingh-MSFT 16,371 Moderator

Hi @Internetlag ,

Yes, even with Microsoft Managed customer can initiate Forced Failover at any time they want. We recommend customers to use Customer Managed so that the control to failover always stays with customer.

Hope this helps.

Thanks

SSingh-MSFT 16,371 Reputation points Moderator

2024-09-02T04:13:35.1566667+00:00

Hi @Internetlag ,

Just checking in to see if the provided suggestion helped. If this answers your query, do click Accept Answer and Mark Helpful for the same. And, if you have any further query do let us know.

Thanks

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Azure SQL Microsoft Managed Failover Question

1. Manual Failover Control

2. Automatic Failover

3. Operational Flexibility

4. Best Practices

1 answer

Your answer