Named replicas in the Hyperscale tier of Azure SQL Database is now generally available after being released into public preview last summer. This capability allows scale-out on a range of read workloads. Of particular use for highly concurrent OLTP workloads or HTAP solutions for real-time data analytics.
Named replicas are created without copying data around, meaning they can normally be replicated in less than a minute, no matter the size of the primary database.
With named replicas you can:
- Create up to 30 secondary read-only replicas
- Make use of Azure Hybrid benefit
- Use a different database name to the primary replica
- Locate the replica on a different logical sever
- Set and change the Service Level Objective independently to the primary replica
- Create different logins for each named replica on logical servers hosting named replicas
You can read about this capability in more detail in the documentation.
