SQL Server 2012 Availability Groups are not a new technology, but build upon existing solutions like Failover Clustering and Database Mirroring. Availability Groups involve distributing copies of a database across multiple SQL Server instances and ensuring the copies are kept in sync. They provide an always-on solution that protects databases and enables failover to maintain availability even in the event of outages or hardware failures. Setting up Availability Groups requires configuring nodes, resources, groups, and quorum to enable automatic failover of databases between instances in a cluster.