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Basic Always On Availability

Groups in SQL Server Standard
Stewart Campbell, 2024-06-05

Introduction
In this walkthrough, we will be setting up a Basic Availability Group in SQL Server
Standard edition as a base for HA. This is a group of SQL servers that work
together to ensure high availability of applications and services. Any HA platform
in SQL Server runs in WSFC (albeit for FCI or AG).

Before we get started, here is a list of acronyms used in this document:

Acronym Description

WSFC Windows Server Failover Cluster (A group of connected and

interdependent servers used for reliability and availability of
an environment)

HA High Availability

AG Availability Groups

BAG Basic Availability Groups

HADR High Always-On Availability and Disaster Recovery

FCI Failover Cluster Instances

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BADR Basic Always-on Availability and Disaster Recovery

To begin, let us provide a succinct breakdown of the various components, and

compare between SQL Server Standard and Enterprise editions:

Component Standard Enterprise

Always On failover cluster Yes Yes

instances

High Always On availability No Yes

groups

Basic Always-On availability Yes No

groups

Contained availability groups No Yes

Distributed availability groups No Yes

Number of Availability Groups Limited to number Limited to

per Database Server of databases in system
Primary resources

Number of Databases per 1 Number of

availability group databases in
Primary

Maximums:

Nodes 2 9

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Of which:

• Primary 1 1

• Read-only Secondary 0 2
Replicas

• Synchronised Secondary 1 3
Replicas with Automatic
Failover

• Synchronised Secondary 1 5
Replicas with Manual
Failover

• Asynchronous Secondary 1 5
Replicas with Manual /
Forced Failover

This functionality therefore ensures that a copy of the current primary is always
available, with the following caveats:

• For Synchronised Sencondary replicas, the more replicas in the group, the
longer it will take to �nalise each entry (incrementally higher latency), i.e. all
secondaries in the chain need to have hardened their logs before the primary
records the transaction as successful. Therefore:
◦ Location is important, the closer to the primary the better.

◦ Connectivity speeds between members of the WSFC makes a difference

(only use in a high-speed intranet environment).

• For Asynchronous Secondary replicas, commit occurs on the Primary and

responds as such, before sending the logs to the secondary replicas.
Therefore:
◦ Location and network speed do not matter. However, stability does.

◦ However, the probability of data loss in case of forced failover is greater

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than with Synchronised Secondary Replicas.

Limitations

Basic availability groups use a subset of features compared to advanced

availability groups on SQL Server Enterprise Edition. Basic availability groups
include the following limitations:

• Limit of two replicas (primary and secondary). Basic Availability Groups for
SQL Server on Linux support an additional con�guration only replica.

• No read access on secondary replica.

• No backups on secondary replica.

• No integrity checks on secondary replicas.

• No support for replicas hosted on servers running a version of SQL Server prior
to SQL Server 2016 Community Technology Preview 3 (CTP3).

• Support for one availability database.

• Basic availability groups cannot be upgraded to advanced availability groups.

The group must be dropped and re-added to a group that contains servers
running only SQL Server Enterprise Edition.

• Basic availability groups are only supported for Standard Edition servers.

• Basic availability groups cannot be part of a distributed availability group.

• You may have multiple Basic availability groups connected to a single instance
of SQL Server.

Prerequisites for setting up BAG

• Ensure both nodes are on the same domain.

• Both nodes have the same version and edition of SQL server installed, with the
same level of patching.

• The hard drive locations are the same on both replicas.

• WSFC has been set up and is correctly con�gured, and both nodes are
members thereof.

Now we need to do the actual Basic Availability Setup

To showcase this, I have the following setup in my environment:

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• Host: Windows Server 2022 Standard with Hyper-V

◦ Virtual Servers:
▪ Active Directory Services. Domain Controller and DNS Services (In the
real world, these would be separate servers.)

▪ DB Server 1, SQL Server 2022 with 3 databases

▪ DB Server 2, SQL Server 2022.

▪ File Server

Step 1: Enable Always On in all participating instances of SQL Server

• Open SQL Server Con�guration Manager (as Administrator).

• Select SQL Server Services.

• Right Click on the instance of SQL server and select Properties.

• In the properties form, select Always On Availability Groups tab.

• Tick Enable Always On Availability Groups.

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• A popup noti�cation will appear to state that the changes will be applied but
will only take effect after the service is restarted. Click on OK.

Step 2: Restart SQL Server instance Service

Right Click on the SQL Server instance and select Restart. The Stopping and
starting pane will brie�y appear

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Step 3: Con�gure AG per database per node

To create a basic availability group, use the CREATE AVAILABILITY

GROUP Transact-SQL command and specify the WITH BASIC option (the default
is ADVANCED). You can also create the basic availability group using the UI in
SQL Server Management Studio.

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For the HR database, we opt for Asynchronous Secondary:

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Endpoints:

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Backup Preference:

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Listener:

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Once that is done, we proceed to Data Synchronisation:

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We are going with Join only, as a backup and restore was done on the secondary.
This will take us to the validation page:

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Summary:

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Pressing Finish will execute setup at the various locations.

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The full detail of what was done is re�ected.

Now, looking at the primary DB server in SSMS, we can see:

The Secondary Replica re�ects:

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We can check that the Virtual Network Node for the listener has been created in
the domain:

Step 4: Adding more databases to AG

Adding the other databases to availability groups re�ects as follows:

• On the primary replica:

◦ In SSMS Connected database list:

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• ◦ AG Dashboard:

• On the secondary replica:

◦ In SSMS Connected database list:

• ◦ AD Dashboard:

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• On Active Directory:
◦ Computers:

The beauty of BADR

Connections to the database can now be made using the listener, and not directly
to the primary and/or secondary replica’s (even though an instance of SQL server
had not been installed on the listener (which is, in and of itself, a virtual network
node, with no OS or applications installed)). Thus, in the case of a failover, it is not
necessary to change the connection string in the application.

The Always-On Dashboard gives a birds-eye view of the synchronisation status of

participating databases

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Manual Failover can take place with the click of a button.

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Here is the entire script applied, at each server as highlighted, to activate BADR:

--- YOU MUST EXECUTE THE FOLLOWING SCRIPT IN SQLCMD MODE.

:Connect DBSERV01
IF (SELECT state FROM sys.endpoints WHERE name = N'Hadr_endpoint') <> 0
BEGIN
ALTER ENDPOINT [Hadr_endpoint] STATE = STARTED
END
GO
use [master]
GO
GRANT CONNECT ON ENDPOINT::[Hadr_endpoint] TO [MyDomain\SQLService]
GO
:Connect DBSERV01
IF EXISTS(SELECT * FROM sys.server_event_sessions WHERE name='AlwaysOn_health'
BEGIN
ALTER EVENT SESSION [AlwaysOn_health] ON SERVER WITH (STARTUP_STATE=ON
END
IF NOT EXISTS(SELECT * FROM sys.dm_xe_sessions WHERE name='AlwaysOn_health'

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BEGIN
ALTER EVENT SESSION [AlwaysOn_health] ON SERVER STATE=START;
END
GO
:Connect DBSERV02
IF (SELECT state FROM sys.endpoints WHERE name = N'Hadr_endpoint') <> 0
BEGIN
ALTER ENDPOINT [Hadr_endpoint] STATE = STARTED
END
GO
use [master]
GO
GRANT CONNECT ON ENDPOINT::[Hadr_endpoint] TO [MyDomain\SQLService]
GO
:Connect DBSERV02
IF EXISTS(SELECT * FROM sys.server_event_sessions WHERE name='AlwaysOn_health'
BEGIN
ALTER EVENT SESSION [AlwaysOn_health] ON SERVER WITH (STARTUP_STATE=ON
END
IF NOT EXISTS(SELECT * FROM sys.dm_xe_sessions WHERE name='AlwaysOn_health'
BEGIN
ALTER EVENT SESSION [AlwaysOn_health] ON SERVER STATE=START;
END
GO
:Connect DBSERV01
USE [master]
GO
CREATE AVAILABILITY GROUP [HR_AG]
WITH (AUTOMATED_BACKUP_PREFERENCE = PRIMARY,
BASIC,
DB_FAILOVER = ON,
DTC_SUPPORT = NONE,
REQUIRED_SYNCHRONIZED_SECONDARIES_TO_COMMIT = 0)
FOR DATABASE

REPLICA ON N'DBServ01' WITH (ENDPOINT_URL = N'TCP://DBServ01.ACSCS.arturicast.co.za:5

N'DBServ02' WITH (ENDPOINT_URL = N'TCP://DBServ02.ACSCS.arturicast.co.za:5022'
GO
:Connect DBSERV01
USE [master]
GO

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ALTER AVAILABILITY GROUP [HR_AG]

ADD LISTENER N'Listener_HR_AG' (
WITH IP
((N'172.26.92.14', N'255.255.0.0')
)
, PORT=1433);
GO
:Connect DBSERV02
ALTER AVAILABILITY GROUP [HR_AG] JOIN;
GO
:Connect DBSERV01
BACKUP DATABASE

TO DISK = N'\\DBSERV01\UserDB\HR\HR.bak' WITH COPY_ONLY, FORMAT, INIT, SKIP

GO
:Connect DBSERV02
RESTORE DATABASE

FROM DISK = N'\\DBSERV01\UserDB\HR\HR.bak' WITH NORECOVERY, NOUNLOAD, STATS

GO
:Connect DBSERV01
BACKUP LOG

TO DISK = N'\\DBSERV01\UserDB\HR\HR.trn' WITH NOFORMAT, INIT, NOSKIP, REWIND

GO
:Connect DBSERV02
RESTORE LOG

FROM DISK = N'\\DBSERV01\UserDB\HR\HR.trn' WITH NORECOVERY, NOUNLOAD, STATS

GO
:Connect DBSERV02
-- Wait for the replica to start communicating
begin try
declare @conn bit
declare @count int
declare @replica_id uniqueidentifier
declare @group_id uniqueidentifier
set @conn = 0
set @count = 30 -- wait for 5 minutes

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if (serverproperty('IsHadrEnabled') = 1)
and (isnull((select member_state from master.sys.dm_hadr_cluster_members
and (isnull((select state from master.sys.database_mirroring_endpoints
begin
select @group_id = ags.group_id from master.sys.availability_groups
select @replica_id = replicas.replica_id from master.sys.availability_replicas
while @conn <> 1 and @count > 0
begin
set @conn = isnull((select connected_state from master.sys.dm_hadr_availabili
if @conn = 1
begin
-- exit loop when the replica is connected, or if the query cannot find t
break
end
waitfor delay '00:00:10'
set @count = @count - 1
end
end
end try
begin catch
-- If the wait loop fails, do not stop execution of the alter database statement
end catch
ALTER DATABASE

SET HADR AVAILABILITY GROUP = [HR_AG];

GO
GO

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