Databases outside of AlwaysOn availability group stuck in RESTORING status I am testing the AlwaysOn feature of SQL Server 2012. I have 2 servers set up and can successfully create availability groups and fail them over between servers. However, any databases that DO NOT belong to an availability group are stuck in a status of "Restoring" on the secondary server. I have started from scratch several times, and the same thing happens to these databases. 

Is this normal behavior? 

I was assuming that databases that don't belong to an AG would simply not show up on the secondary server.
How did you setup your Availability Group?  It sounds like what happened is you blanketed the backups and restores from the primary replica server to the secondary replica server.

In other words, you did a:

backup database &lt;DatabaseName&gt;
to disk .... &lt;so on and so forth&gt;


to all databases on the primary and a

restore database &lt;DatabaseName&gt;
from disk ....
with norecovery


to all the backups aimed at the secondary replica server (proper operations for future AG databases).  If you don't join one of those databases to the availability group then it'll stay in that restoring state.

The main question here is, if Database1 (for example) on your primary replica server as not meant to be in the availability group, then why would it be restored/existing on the secondary replica server to begin with?