Azure is a cloud platform offering from Microsoft that has a vast set of services for organizations to build and deploy applications. Deploying a SQL Server AlwaysOn availability group on Microsoft Azure is not a lot different than deploying it on-premises. The requirements, components, and prerequisites remain the same; however, the implementation differs.
To configure a two-node AlwaysOn AG on Azure, we still need a domain controller, a primary replica, a secondary replica, and an AlwaysOn listener. However, the VMs are provisioned on Azure and Azure VMs require a load balancer. An AlwaysOn AG on Azure can either be configured manually or automatically by using the SQL Server AlwaysOn Cluster template.
In this exercise, we'll configure an AlwaysOn AG using the SQL Server AlwaysOn Cluster template. Follow these steps to configure an AlwaysOn AG on Microsoft Azure.