Azure Serverless SQL - Failover Group - Always Running

Question

When I place an Azure SQL serverless database inside a failover group, I notice that there is near constant activity on the server. Thus I am billed per second for this near constant activity.

I have also noticed that the auto-pause delay never seems to take effect.

Is the expected behavior for a serverless instance to have to always be running to manage the active replication between the read-write and read-only instances?

Or will the server ever pause due to inactivity if no processes are being initiated by users?

Answer 1

The following features do not support auto-pausing, but do support auto-scaling. If any of the following features are used, then auto-pausing must be disabled and the database will remain online regardless of the duration of database inactivity:

• Geo-replication (active geo-replication and auto-failover groups).
• Long-term backup retention (LTR).
• The sync database used in SQL Data Sync. Unlike sync databases, hub and member databases support auto-pausing.
• DNS alias created for the logical server containing a serverless database.
• Elastic Jobs (preview), when the job database is a serverless database. Databases targeted by elastic jobs support auto-pausing, and will be resumed by job connections.

For more information, please read this documentation.