Does enrolling a SQL Azure database in Geo-Replication provide failover out of the box?

Question

If I go into the Azure portal and go to a SQL Azure db and click on Geo-Replication I can select another data center to have a secondary database in. I can configure this as "readable." With that done, do I automatically get failover?

So for example, if my primary db is in Central US and I configure Geo-Replication to US East 2, will anything automatically failover my db to US East 2 if there is an error in Central US? Or do i have to initiate the failover through the portal or some code/monitoring solution? And would i have to update my connection string or does the azure infrastructure manage this for me?

I've reviewed a few docs below about this but looking for some more input: - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/sql-database-designing-cloud-solutions-for-disaster-recovery/?rnd=1 - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/sql-database-geo-replication-failover-portal/ - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/sql-database-geo-replication-overview/

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/sql-database-geo-replication-overview/

Answer 1

do i have to initiate the failover through the portal or some code/monitoring solution?

Yes, you have to initiate the fail over explicitly. There is no automatic failover in case the primary goes offline.

would i have to update my connection string or does the azure infrastructure manage this for me?

You would have to update connection string explicitly as well.

FailOver and DR drill sections of this link should provide necessary info, it also talks about keeping firewall rules and users in sync between primary and secondary : https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/spotlight-on-new-capabilities-of-azure-sql-database-geo-replication/