SQL Server 2017 – Safe Log Backups on Primary with Log Shipping or Availability Groups

Seeing that the recovery model is set to simple and msdn states that the simple recovery model does not support point-in-time recovery - Does this mean that I won't be able to use my transaction log backups to restore the database in a disaster to an hour before it happened?

Even taking a transaction log backup is not supported for databases using the SIMPLE recovery model. This is a restriction of the database engine based on how this recovery model works, and the recovery features it doesn't support, as you mentioned.

A transaction log backup maintenance plan task automatically skips databases in SIMPLE recovery to avoid causing errors.

Which backup should be done first, the database backup or the transaction log backups? Articles that I'm busy reading say I should do the database backup first and then the transaction log backup else I will get maintenance plan errors, but I'm currently first backing up my transaction logs and then data databases and I'm not getting any errors.

For the reasons I mentioned above, it won't matter for databases using SIMPLE recovery, as they will be skipped by the transaction log backup task.

For databases in the other two recovery models, a full backup must exist before you start taking transaction log backups (just the first time), or you will get an error -- this is probably what the articles refer to.

Point-in-time recovery ability is normally driven by business need -- in other words, you determine how critical the data is and how much you can afford to lose, then set the appropriate recovery model to meet those needs, and finally create a backup solution.

Even though SIMPLE recovery does not support point-in-time recovery, if an hour of data loss is okay, perhaps a differential backup solution could work for you. (There are far too many variables that go into developing this kind of solution to give you a complete picture with what was provided in the question.)

It sounds like you may benefit from a Failover Cluster if all you're looking for is availability. You can run them on standard edition and if you take an N+1 route, you can have two nodes for HA and have one in a DR site ready to take over. You'll need to work on your storage availability for the DR side, but that's a whole other can of worms.

Another option may be Log Shipping since you're already taking log backups every minute. You can ship the logs off to your HA/DR server.

You can get more information on how to do it and the implicatioons for AWS here:

Implementing Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clustering and SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability Groups in the AWS Cloud