Database Administration & Maintenance

DPH05 SQL Server 2025: Mastering High Availability, Disaster Recovery, and Business Continuity

11/20/2025

1:00pm - 2:15pm

Level: Intermediate

Abdullah Mamun

Program Manager

Microsoft

David Pless

Principal Program Manager

Microsoft

Ensuring SQL Server remains highly available, recoverable, and resilient is essential for modern data platforms - whether on-premises, in the cloud, or across hybrid environments. SQL Server 2025 introduces significant innovations that simplify HADR configuration, accelerate failover, and strengthen business continuity strategies. This session provides a practical roadmap for leveraging these capabilities to protect your mission-critical workloads.

We’ll explore key enhancements to Always On Availability Groups and Failover Cluster Instances, including asynchronous page request dispatching for faster recovery, database resolving state for improved resiliency, and AG group commit wait configuration for optimized transaction flow. Security and performance improvements such as TLS 1.3 with TDS 8.0, persisted statistics on secondary replicas, and optimized locking mechanisms will also be covered. Backup capabilities have evolved with immutable blob storage for ransomware protection, ZSTD compression for faster and smaller backups, and support for full and differential backups on secondary replicas.

Finally, see how Azure Arc simplifies HADR operations with cloud-based management of Availability Groups and Failover Cluster Instances, automated patching, real-time health monitoring, and integrated backup orchestration. Whether you’re optimizing on-premises deployments or designing hybrid continuity strategies, you’ll leave with actionable insights to elevate your organization’s data resilience.

You will learn:

  • Understand SQL Server 2025 HADR Innovations - Learn how new features such as asynchronous page request dispatching, AG commit wait configuration, and Fabric Mirroring improve failover speed and resiliency.
  • Implement Advanced Backup Strategies - Explore backup enhancements including immutable blob storage, ZSTD compression, and backups on secondary replicas to strengthen data protection and optimize performance.
  • Enhance Business Continuity with Azure Arc - See how Azure Arc enables centralized management, automated patching, compliance monitoring, and integrated backup orchestration across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid infrastructures.