High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) are frequently treated as interchangeable concepts in cloud architecture discussions. In Azure SQL, this misunderstanding leads to incorrect designs, unrealistic SLAs, and painful surprises during real outages.

This session clarifies the architectural differences between SQL Server Always On Availability Groups and Azure SQL Managed Instance Failover Groups, explaining why they are not equivalent solutions and should not be evaluated as such. Attendees will explore how synchronous replication enables true high availability in SQL Server Always On, how Azure SQL Managed Instance provides built-in HA under the hood, and why Failover Groups exist to solve a fundamentally different problem: regional disaster recovery.

Through clear diagrams and real-world scenarios, the session demonstrates:

How HA and DR differ in replication model, failover behavior, and data loss expectations

Why SQL Managed Instance intentionally hides replicas and clustering complexity

How to correctly align availability designs with business RPO/RTO requirements

Common migration mistakes and how to avoid them

This talk is intended for DBAs, cloud architects, and technical leaders responsible for designing or migrating SQL platforms to Azure. Attendees will leave with a practical framework for selecting the right availability strategy—and the language to explain those choices confidently to stakeholders.