I have a VM that runs IIS and SQL server for an enterprise application used by around 100 users.
Right now I just have this VM but I would like to add some availability. It’s not critical to have zero downtime application but at least that if by some reason the server fails then I’m able to wake up a secondary instance and reroute traffic to it.
So I guess this is done by using Availabilty Sets but what I understand is that I have at least to have two VMs in the availability set and load balancer so traffic is redirected round robin to each VM. By using the above approach that means that I must have to pay for having two instances with same specs I guess.
What I would like and don’t know if this is possible is like having same above scenario where one the of the VMs is stopped so I don’t get any charge and in case of VM failure I can started maybe manually so the application works again. If this is possible how does the hard drive is available so that the other VM always have the latest data.
If it’s not possible then can I have then for the availabilty set a second VM with the lowest specs that my app can support so if the main VM fails at least critical users can still access the app (maybe performance won’t be great but app will work) and when main VM is functional again then main traffic is again redirected to main VM.