SQL Server 2012 – AlwaysOn #2

In previous blog post I wrote about one of the main benefits of AlwaysOn in SQL server 2012 and today I writing about another interesting benefit of AlwaysOn. Backups can actually be conducted on any of the replicas participating in the availability group, and you can even spread the log backups between multiple replicas! The log backups on the secondaries form a single log chain. If you experience performance issues in your primary database, you can move the workload of backups from your primary database to increase the performance. I haven’t tried it myself yet and I would have serious thoughts and serious testing before I would try it myself. If you spread the log backups to multiple secondaries you should store all the backups in a central location as you would need the complete log chain WHEN, not if, you need to restore the database. Backups is not something you would play around with, and you should make sure you have a well-documented and tested backup AND restore strategy. If you don’t have one, you can contact any of our SQL server experts and we will help you with that. Don’t wait with the backup/restore strategy to it`´s to late!