I am creating a simple DR plan for my Azure application. The app’s RTO is up to a week so it is not a critical app so I don’t need to setup Active/Passive servers or any type of automated failover.

If the datacenter loses power for six hours, I don’t care. I’m really just solving DR for some event that takes the whole datacenter offline, such as fire, natural disaster, etc.

With that understanding, I was looking at how to restore an Azure SQL database to another location.

• On the database Overview page, there is an option to “Restore”. The problem with that is there is no option to restore to another logical server. Which I assume is required if the datacenter is unavailable.
• I believe my best option is to create a new server and db, and use the backup to populate it. I just have to update the connection string in my app, yes?

Therein lies my problem. I’m creating a new database on a new server and on the “Additional Settings” step you can choose to Use Existing Data and select a backup. I see backups, but not for the db I need.

I have two dbs on the server. Db1 is in the backup list is a Standard tier, serverless with geo-redundant backup. Db2 that is not in the backup list is a Basic tier, serverless, with zone-redundant backup.

I’m wondering if its either 1) the different tier or 2) the different backup schemes that is preventing me from using a db backup? I tried changing the tier of Db2, to the standard-tier and changed to a geo-redundant backup but the db is still not visible.

Is the Db2 config really the issue and it just takes time (hours/days?) to establish the geo-redundant backups, or is there something else?