How to Fail Over Availability Groups

Owned by Knowledge Assistant
Oct 21, 2024
1 min read
Description of Issue

How do I manually fail over a SQL Always On Availability Group?

Context

  • SQL

  • Always ON High Availability

  • Availability Groups

  • System Administration

  • OnPrem

Cause

Need to manually fail over a Availability Group for testing or maintenance of SQL server.

Resolution

  1. Within SSMS, navigate to the AlwaysOn High Availability > Availability Groups

  2. Right click the Availability Group you wish to failover and click Failover

  3. On the Introduction screen, click Next

  4. On the Select New Primary Replica screen, make sure the desire SQL server is listed and selected, then click Next

  5. On the Connect to Replica screen, connect to the SQL instance if required, if not click Next

  6. On the Summary screen, verify that everything is correct and click Finish

Additional Information

  • You can failover from any SQL server however if you failover the Availability Group from a secondary instance then you will need to connect to the primary instance during step 5.