Azure SQL Database Improves Disaster Recovery with New Features

Azure SQL Database customers may have noticed late last Friday that Microsoft added some new features to the Cloud-based database service. But then again, it was Friday—many were probably watching the weekend clock instead of anticipating new Microsoft releases.

On Friday, Microsoft unveiled three new important features for Azure SQL Database to provide better auditing and to ensure recovery in the event of a disaster.

Here's what's been added.

Auditing: Bringing Azure SQL Database closer to its on-premises papa, Microsoft has enabled new auditing capabilities, enabling dashboard views and reports to quickly review database service occurrences. Available for: Basic, Standard, and Premium tiers.

Geo-restore: If disaster strikes your Azure datacenter (some might say "when disaster strikes"), Azure SQL Database customers can now restore databases to any Azure region, instead of just the database storage home datacenter. Available for: Basic, Standard, and Premium tiers.

Standard geo-replication: With geo-replication, databases can be configured to automatically replicate with a secondary database in another Azure datacenter to ensure continuity should the datacenter become unavailable due to disaster. When configured, should a major event happen, the secondary database can be used for failover. Available for: Standard and Premium tiers.