Brendan McCaffrey takes a look:
Back in 2022, I wrote a post called SQL Server Backups on Secondary Replicas: Best Practice or Bad Idea? At the time, the limitations were clear: backups on secondaries were restricted, operationally risky, and often misunderstood.
Three years later, SQL Server 2025 has expanded what you can do on a secondary replica. Some of these changes are genuinely great. But the question I keep getting is:
Does SQL Server 2025 finally make backups on secondary replicas a best practice?
Read on for the answer.