Dedicating a network for cluster and AG traffic between on prem and Azure vms

• MacNiner

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  August 2, 2022 at 5:35 pm

  #4071536

  Hello.  I was wondering if anyone has setup a hybrid cluster between on premise VMs and Azure VMs with a dedicated network for AG and WSFC traffic?  I have found plenty of articles on how to set this up for on premise servers with multiple NICs.  What we are trying to figure out is if there is any benefit to doing this when some of your servers are in Azure.  This Microsoft post says that there is no gain to attaching a secondary network card to an Azure VM.  This begs the question if a dedicated NIC for cluster/ag traffic should even be done in a hybrid configuration and if there is a performance or reliability reason to do so.

  Near the bottom under the Networking section is where it states this.

  "Bandwidth limits for a particular VM are shared across NICs and adding an additional NIC does not improve availability group performance for SQL Server on Azure VMs. As such, there is no need to add a second NIC."

  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql/virtual-machines/windows/hadr-cluster-best-practices?view=azuresql&tabs=windows2012#resource-limits

  This is what we were thinking of doing but these instructions are not for Azure servers.  Let me know any thoughts on it, thanks!!

  https://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/5076/configuring-a-dedicated-network-for-sql-server-always-on-availability-groups-data-replication-traffic/

• Site Owners

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  August 3, 2022 at 6:10 pm

  #4072110

  Thanks for posting your issue and hopefully someone will answer soon.

  This is an automated bump to increase visibility of your question.