Driver and client connectivity support for availability groups

Applies to: SQL Server

This article describes considerations for client connectivity to Always On availability groups, including prerequisites, restrictions, and recommendations for client configurations and settings.

Client connectivity support

The section below provides information about Always On availability groups support for client connectivity.

Driver support

The following table summarizes driver support for Always On availability groups:

Driver Multi-subnet failover Application intent Read-only routing Multi-subnet failover: faster single subnet endpoint failover Multi-subnet failover: named instance resolution for SQL clustered instances
SQL Native Client 11.0 ODBC Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
SQL Native Client 11.0 OLEDB No Yes Yes No No
ADO.NET with .NET Framework 4.0 with connectivity patch 1 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
ADO.NET with .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 with connectivity patch 2 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Microsoft ODBC Driver 13.1+ for SQL Server Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Microsoft JDBC Driver 4.0+ for SQL Server Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Microsoft OLE DB Driver for SQL Server 3 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

1 Download the connectivity patch for ADO .NET with .NET Framework 4.0: https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2600211.

2 Download the connectivity patch for ADO.NET with .NET Framework 3.5 SP1: https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2654347.

3 Download Microsoft OLE DB Driver for SQL Server: https://aka.ms/downloadmsoledbsql.

Important

To connect to an availability group listener, a client must use a TCP connection string.

Next steps

See also