Clarification about SQL failover and data loss

[toxic]

Hi!

In review mode set 1 – question 30 the answer says that “Azure SQL Managed Instance offers automatic failover with zero data loss” but “Azure SQL Database Standard does not provide automatic failover with zero data loss”. I’m confused as to where to find this in the documentation. Does this reference a planned synchronous failover? Because from what I can tell that’s the only way to guarantee “no data loss”. So isn’t that true for both/all tiers then?

/JR

[toxic]

In another similar question (set 3, question 11), the answer states that SQL MI GP does not guarantee zero data loss during failover, but this MS article clearly says it does: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/reliability/reliability-sql-managed-instance?pivots=general-purpose

[Irene-TutorialsDojo]

Hi toxic,

Thank you for flagging this; you’re correct. SQL Managed Instance General Purpose with zone redundancy does support synchronous replication and guarantees zero data loss during zone failures, as stated in the Microsoft documentation you referenced.

The explanation has been updated. The correct reason SQL MI GP is not the best answer is cost; it provisions a full managed instance with features unnecessary for a single transactional database, making it more expensive than Azure SQL Database Premium, which offers equivalent zone-redundant HA. The answer choice (Premium) remains the same.

Thanks for helping us keep the content accurate!

Best,

Irene @ Tutorials Dojo