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How are Windows Server Failover Cluster and AlwaysOn Availability Groups related — are they interchangeable or complementary technologies?
sobes.tech AI
Answer from AI
Windows Server Failover Cluster (WSFC) and AlwaysOn Availability Groups (AG) are complementary technologies, not interchangeable.
WSFC provides the cluster infrastructure responsible for failure detection and resource failover between nodes. AlwaysOn Availability Groups is a SQL Server feature that uses WSFC to ensure high availability and database replication.
In simpler terms, WSFC is a clustering platform, and AG is a mechanism for database replication and failover that operates on top of WSFC. Without WSFC, AG cannot function correctly.
Thus, WSFC and AlwaysOn AG work together to provide fault tolerance and scalability for SQL Server.