Azure Site Recovery can protect Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware, and physical servers, and you can use Azure or your secondary datacenter as your recovery site. Site Recovery coordinates and manages the ongoing replication of data by integrating with existing technologies including System Center and Microsoft SQL Server AlwaysOn.

Orchestrated disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS)

Use Site Recovery to automate the recovery of services when a site outage happens at the primary datacenter. Bring over applications in an orchestrated way to help restore service quickly, even for complex multi-tier workloads. Easily create disaster recovery plans in the Microsoft Azure classic portal, where they are stored. The disaster recovery plans can be as simple or advanced as your business requirements demand, including the execution of custom Windows PowerShell scripts and Azure Automation runbooks, and pauses for manual interventions. Customize networks by mapping virtual networks between the primary and recovery sites, and test disaster recovery plans whenever you want without disrupting the services at your primary location.

Replication and disaster recovery to Azure

Replicate your workloads to Azure and enable new capabilities. Applications can be migrated to Azure with just a few clicks, or burst to Azure temporarily when you encounter a surge in demand. Run reports and analytics on copies of production workloads in Azure without affecting customers. DevTest new versions of applications with copies of live data, and then seamlessly put the new version into production in your datacenter.

Continuous health monitoring with Site Recovery

Site Recovery monitors the state of your protected instances continuously and remotely from Azure. When replicating between two sites that you control, your virtual machines’ data and replication stays on your networks. All communication with Azure is encrypted. When replicating to Azure as the secondary site, your data is encrypted and you can also select encryption for data at rest.