Set up Microsoft SQL Server on GCP with zero downtime in case of a zonal outage within a region. What should you do?

To achieve zero downtime for SQL Server during a zonal outage, you need a solution that replicates data and automatically fails over across zones. Installing SQL Server on Compute Engine with Always On Availability Groups (AGs) and Windows Failover Clustering (WFC) is the correct approach. Placing nodes in different zones ensures that if one zone experiences an outage, another zone's node can take over immediately. Cloud SQL for SQL Server offers high availability, but it's a managed service, and the question implies a self-managed SQL Server setup. Cloud Spanner is a globally distributed database, but it's not SQL Server. Placing nodes in different subnets within the same zone would not protect against a zonal outage.