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admin1095's avatar
admin1095
Copper Contributor
Aug 15, 2023

Is an AlwaysOn availability group an a/a cluster?

An AG is an active/passive cluster, but you can set read only for the secondary instance and thus set a load balancing. Is it then an active/active cluster?

1 Reply

  • LainRobertson's avatar
    LainRobertson
    Silver Contributor

    admin1095 

     

    AlwaysOn is never active/active as it is not multi-master and changes are always distributed from the current primary host to the others in the group.

     

    You get some control over deciding upon synchronous (two-phase commit; can cause slowness subject to latency) versus asynchronous replication (reduces overhead delays but at the potential for data loss), as well as using a replica for back-up purposes, but none of this has any bearing on the active/passive relationship.

     

    Cheers,

    Lain

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