One signal

AWS has added Multi-AZ deployments with Always On Availability Groups to Amazon RDS for SQL Server Developer Edition, letting teams build and test high-availability setups with a synchronous standby in another Availability Zone.

Why it matters

The practical win is cost-free access to the functionality of Enterprise Edition for non-production work, so developers can test failover behaviour and production-like architectures without paying Enterprise licensing fees. The feature covers SQL Server 2019 and 2022 Developer Edition, plus SQL Server 2025 Enterprise Developer Edition. There is one small trap in the toolbox: SQL Server 2025 Standard Developer Edition is not supported. AWS says regional availability and pricing details vary by service documentation, so check those before designing the grand failover ballet.

Discuss: Should cloud providers make production-equivalent high-availability testing standard in every developer tier, or is limiting it by edition a reasonable way to protect paid infrastructure revenue?

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