How to create BAG on non-wsfc nodes (SQL Server 2016 STANDARD Edition) Stumbled over this a few times now, while trying to figure out if a consultant is right or not in his claim. I hope you can shed light on it.

Is it, or is it not possible to configure a Basic Availability Group on a database present in two AD-Servers with each its own standard edition SQL Server 2016 SP2 cu2 (default instance)
(Both had the SSMS 16.5.3 – now upgraded to SSMS 17.9)
None of them are configured as members in any failover cluster.

Almost everywhere I seem to find, it looks as if they all require that nodes be member(s) of a WSFC.

“Almost”, because I read a Microsoft note, stating that it’s possible with SSMS 17. I did install that and it also fails to enable the options to switch on AG?

If it should be possible, do you know where I could go to read what’s needed…

Re: 
https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2015/06/how-to-set-up-standard-edition-alwayson-availability-groups-in-sql-server-2016/#comment-2654300
Is it, or is it not possible to configure a Basic Availability Group on a database present in two AD-Servers with each its own standard edition SQL2016sp2 cu2 (default instance) (Both had the SSMS 16.5.3 management studio – now upgraded to SSMS 17.9) None of them are configured as members in any failover cluster.


As far as my knowledge goes the BAG's require WSFC and you cannot configure BAG without WSFC for even SQL Server 2017, till now at the time of writing the answer. MS technology is changing too fast and who knows you might be able to do it in future. The option of "clusterless" AG is for "full fledged" availability groups and not for the basic one and again the feature comes from SQL Server 2017 vNext and not from SQL Server 2016. So if you are using SQL Server 2016 and trying to configure clusterless BAG, it is not possible