Clusterless read-scale availability group - which edition?

Question

I am currently trying to set up a clusterless/read-scale availability group on sql server 2017 standard edition. After much effort I get a message eventually saying "Msg 41199, Level 16, State 14, Line 12...is not supported by this edition of SQL Server"

The documentation says it should be but another contributor found this is a documentation mistake, which MS haven't corrected yet. https://www.madeiradata.com/post/always-on-availability-groups-in-standard-edition

Is this still an enterprise-only feature for sql server 2019 and sql server 2022. I could do the testing but thought this forum may be quicker than installing 4 new instances, with all the hassle with identical file paths etc.

Answer 1

On Standard Edition you can only have Basic Availability Groups. If they can be clusterless, I don't know. But they cannot be read-scale, since you can only have one secondary which cannot be readonly.

As for the documentation, on the page you linked to, I see:

That is, Enterprise-only.

The footnote 4 says:

Standard Edition supports basic availability groups. A basic availability group supports two replicas, with one database. For more information about basic availability groups, see Basic Availability Groups.

But this does not imply that clusterless AGs are available in Standard. You could argue that the footnote is superfluous and serves no purpose.