Following the expansion of its failover capabilities for Azure SQL Database earlier this month, Microsoft has now extended the disaster recovery options available to customers using Azure Site Recovery.
In a post on the Azure blog, Rochak Mittal, Principal PM of Cloud + Enterprise, announced that a new capability of Azure Site Recovery has now hit public preview. Specifically, this is geared towards clients using Infrastructure-as-a-Service (Iaas) implementations in their businesses.
The new capability allows customers to replicate their Azure IaaS VMs - and therefore applications - to a different Azure region of their choosing, all without the need to add extra virtual machines or so-called "appliances" to their Azure subscription.
Using the VM replication option is as simple as picking which VM or application you want to replicate, choosing your target Azure region, and tweaking the replication settings to suit your needs.
This VM recovery solution also allows you to create what is dubbed "Application-aware recovery", meaning that either an "application owner, disaster recovery admin or a managed service provider" can use this new option in ASR to control not only how the failover will happen, but when.
Speaking of when, if you are concerned about the way in which your failover implementation will fare in the real world, Disaster Recovery drills can be conducted at any point, with no impact on either production workloads or existing replications.
It is worth keeping in mind that cross-region Disaster Recovery is available in all Azure public regions where Azure Site Recovery is also offered.
Image: Azure Blog
