Microsoft has recently added SQL Server 2014 AlwaysOn to the Microsoft Azure Gallery and the following screenshots go through the process of using it with the default settings.
The follow description is supplied from the gallery:
‘Automates the deployment of a SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability Group for high availability of SQL Server. It provisions 2 SQL Server 2014 Enterprise replicas (primary and secondary) and 1 witness file share in a Windows Cluster. It also provisions 2 Domain Controller replicas (primary and secondary). In addition, it configures an Availability Group Listener for clients to connect to the primary SQL Server replica.’
It should be noted that this gallery option will be very expensive to run long term due to the included Microsoft SQL licence costs. I suspect Microsoft should also offer a SQL Server 2014 Evaluation Edition alternative to allow cheaper testing and the ability to use in-house SQL licensing if the testing works out.
Warning: As mentioned, this will be expensive to run long term as shown in the pricing below (as at 23/08/2014):
From clicking Create the process took ~ 2 hours.
You will see the following progress on the Startboard:
The Notifications section shows more info on the creation process
Here is what gets created:
and SQL Server looks like:
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