The Microsoft SQL Server 2016 AlwaysOn Availability Groups ability to support multiple replicas with a mixture of synchronous and asynchronous data replication between primary and multiple mirrors, makes this technology an ideal solution for building a disaster recovery solution on top of the existing high availability solution.

In the sample design shown in the following figure, the on-premises data center hosts two availability replicas in synchronous commit mode for high availability. The VMware Cloud Provider Program facility hosts one replica, running in asynchronous mode for disaster recovery protection. In addition, each data center facility employs vSphere HA to protect virtual machines from ESXi host failure and to facilitate the rapid recovery caused by a locally contained outage.

This sample architecture allows for variations to this topology using multiple VMware Cloud Provider data centers and multiple replicas (up to five) within the solution architecture.