In my last post, I talked about setting up geo-replication for Azure SQL databases. There might be situations where you need to terminate your replication between your replicas. This could be a need for various reasons. You want to move your replica to a different region or you want to remove replication temporarily or you want to bring your secondary replica online and allow DML operations on it etc.

To remove replication, Azure provides two options: planned and forced termination. Again, if you have worked with on-premise database mirroring or availability groups, then this will seem familiar to you. Planned termination incurs ZERO data loss for the replica. The forced termination has chances of data loss.

Planned Termination is intended for use in planned operations where data loss is unacceptable. Termination can only be performed on the primary database, after the active secondary has been seeded.

Forced termination is intended for when the primary database or one of its active secondary databases is lost or is inaccessible. A forced termination can be performed on either the primary database or the active secondary. Every forced termination results in the irreversible loss of connectivity between the primary database and at least one active secondary. In addition, forced termination on an active secondary causes the loss of any transactions that have not been replicated from the primary database. If the primary database has only one continuous copy relationship, after termination, updates to the primary database will no longer be protected.

You will have to setup the replication again in case you want a synchronized copy of the database.

The steps to accomplish this is mentioned below.

Select the Geo-Replication tab for the database. This tab is only enabled for databases in subscriptions that are enrolled in the Premium preview program. Active Geo-Replication is currently only supported for Premium databases. You should see that the Replication Role for the database is displayed as source.

1. Select the desired active secondary from the REPLICAS list.
2. To terminate the continuous copy relationship, click Stop Replica. This launches the Stop Active Geo-Replication dialog which allows you to select the type of termination you want to perform.
3. The Stop Active Geo-Replication dialog box presents two options when launched from the primary database:Stop replication after synchronization completes: This option ensures that the termination happens after the committed transactions on the primary have been replicated to the active secondary.Stop replication immediately: This option terminates the continuous copy relationship between the primary and the selected active secondary immediately. You should expect some data loss for the active secondary in this scenario.

   Select the Stop replication after synchronization completes option and click to confirm.

Reference:

Terminate a Continuous Copy Relationship
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn741323.aspx