SQL Server Disaster Recovery Strategies

"Hope is not a strategy" - Google SRE Team motto

Being able to recover our data in the event of an outage is a (if not the most) critical aspect of managing SQL Server. But how do we plan for the worst? What technologies are available to us? And how do we implement a disaster recovery strategy when the worst has just occurred?

Join Microsoft Data Platform MVP, Andrew Pruski, in this session to delve into SQL Server disaster recovery strategies.

We'll start by defining the difference between high availability and disaster recovery.

They are often combined together but they are different, more like two sides of the same coin and that affects our choices when picking a technology to implement.

But before we start to implement any DR technologies we need to define a few things:

• What is the maximum amount of data that we can afford to lose? (RPO)
• How long do we have to recover our SQL Server instances? (RTO)
• Where is our DR site located? Is it in a remote data centre or in the Cloud?

Then we'll look at the different technologies available to us in SQL Server, how can they help us define our disaster recovery strategy? Each option has a different implementation and we'll look at:

• Backup/Restore strategies
• Log Shipping
• Mirroring
• Always On Availability Groups

Then to round off the session we'll look at how Pure Storage can help DBAs build a DR strategy, specifically a technology called ActiveDR.

We'll discuss how this technology differs from "traditional" SQL Server DR options and the benefits that it brings to the table.