Box 1: SQL Managed Instance

Scenario: Once migrated to Azure, DB1 and DB2 must meet the following requirements:

Maintain availability if two availability zones in the local Azure region fail.

Fail over automatically.

Minimize I/O latency.

The auto-failover groups feature allows you to manage the replication and failover of a group of databases on a server or all databases in a managed instance to another region. It is a declarative abstraction on top of the existing active geo-replication feature, designed to simplify deployment and management of geo-replicated databases at scale. You can initiate a geo-failover manually or you can delegate it to the Azure service based on a user-defined policy. The latter option allows you to automatically recover multiple related databases in a secondary region after a catastrophic failure or other unplanned event that results in full or partial loss of the SQL Database or SQL Managed Instance availability in the primary region.

Box 2: Business critical

SQL Managed Instance is available in two service tiers:

General purpose: Designed for applications with typical performance and I/O latency requirements.

Business critical: Designed for applications with low I/O latency requirements and minimal impact of underlying maintenance operations on the workload.