Allan Hirt talks about clusterless AGs:
A quick history lesson: through SQL Server 2016, we have three main variants of AGs:
- “Regular” AGs (i.e. the ones deployed using an underlying Windows Server failover cluster [WSFC] requiring Active Directory [AD]; SQL Server 2012+)
- AGs that can be deployed without AD, but using a WSFC and certificates (SQL Server 2016+ with Windows Server 2016+)
- Distributed AGs (SQL Server 2016+)
SQL Server v.Next (download the bits here) adds another variant which is, to a degree, a side effect of how things can be deployed in Linux: AGs with no underlying cluster. In the case of a Windows Server-based install, this means that there could be no WSFC, and for Linux, currently no Pacemaker.
Read on for more details, including limitations and expectations.