Drag and Drop Question You plan to deploy SAP on Azure. The deployment must meet the following requirements: - Support failover to another Azure region in the event of a regional outage. - Minimize…

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SAP on Azure Fault Tolerance - Explained

The Setup

Two components need cross-region DR solutions:

Why Azure Site Recovery for SAP Web Dispatcher

SAP Web Dispatcher is a stateless reverse proxy/load balancer - it routes HTTP(S) traffic to SAP application servers but holds no critical data of its own.

• Cross-region requirement: ASR continuously replicates entire VMs to a secondary Azure region and can orchestrate failover with one click. This is exactly what "failover to another region" requires.
• Minimizes data loss: Because Web Dispatcher is stateless, there's no meaningful data to lose. ASR's VM replication is sufficient.
• Cost-effective: ASR is cheaper than over-engineering a stateless component.

Why Native Replication for SQL Server 2017

SQL Server 2017 includes Always On Availability Groups (AG) - this is what "native replication" refers to here.

• Cross-region support: Always On AGs can span Azure regions via VNet peering or VPN Gateway.
• Minimizes data loss: Synchronous commit mode achieves RPO = 0 (zero data loss). ASR can't match this guarantee for databases.
• Lower cost than ASR for databases: Native SQL Server HA features are already included in your SQL Server license. Adding ASR on top adds cost without benefit.
• Application consistency: Always On AG understands SQL Server internals - it guarantees a consistent database state at failover. ASR is VM-level and may capture mid-transaction states.

Why the Other Options Are Wrong

Availability Sets - Protect VMs within a single region against rack/hardware failures (fault domains) and patching reboots (update domains). They provide no cross-region protection whatsoever. This is the most common mistake - confusing intra-region HA with DR.

Rsync - A Unix file-sync utility. It has no role in Azure VM failover or SQL Server HA. It's a distractor.

Key Takeaway

Use ASR for stateless/application-tier workloads that lack built-in DR. Use native replication when the database engine has its own HA mechanism - it will always be cheaper, faster, and more consistent than generic VM replication.

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