Azure

Over the last year, I’ve been delivering a number of partner enablement training sessions for Microsoft. They target the changes in SQL Server 2014 and also provide an introduction to Power BI.

During the sessions for day two, I have been getting the attendees to set up a high availability environment in Azure, with a Windows Server 2012 R2 domain controller and a couple of SQL Server 2014 Enterprise member servers. This process basically involves:

2014-10-13

There were a number of great announcements from Scott Guthrie today: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/azure-sql-databases-api-management-media-services-websites-role-based-access-control-and-more

One that particularly caught my eye was a subtle change to the billing for Azure SQL Database. Databases used to be billed at a daily charge.

While this might not have seemed a big deal, the only way to create a transactionally-consistent backup of the database was to first copy it using CREATE DATABASE AS COPY OF original database, then to use the database export functions on the copy. The export needed to be done on the copy (not on the original) as it just copied the data in each table, one table at a time.

2014-09-14

One of the things I’ve been keeping an eye on for quite a while now is the development of the Azure Search system.

While it’s not a full replacement for the full-text indexing service in SQL Server on-premises as yet, it’s a really, really good start.

Liam Cavanagh, Pablo Castro and the team have done a great job bringing this to the preview stage and I suspect it could be quite popular. I was very impressed by how they incorporated quite a bit of feedback I gave them early on, and I’m sure that others involved would have felt the same.

2014-08-25

BACKUP TO URL was introduced as an add-on in Cumulative Update 2 for SQL Server 2012 Service Pack 1 and as a built-in feature for SQL Server 2014. I previously described this in a blog post.

We have been using this in a variety of ways from on-premises systems:

For example, it is an easy way to distribute a backup of a database to a large number of systems. Imagine you have a chain of retail stores that needs product and other reference information updated regularly. You can keep this data in a separate database at the head office, back it up to an Azure Storage account, and have each store download it separately.  This has major bandwidth and reliability improvements over other solutions such as having each store maintain a VPN connection to the head office.

2014-07-09

One of the projects I have been working on as time permits is to construct a way to create a shared access signature using native T-SQL. Shared access signatures are needed when working with SQL Server data files in Azure.

Mostly, DBAs would use a programmatic utility such as Azure Storage Explorer to generate these signatures.

It is also straightforward to do so with SQL CLR based code but this is not enabled in all environments.

2014-07-09

With each update to Azure, it’s been getting easier to implement options for SQL Server. One of the challenges for the teams that write documentation and training is this rate of change.

For a long time, Availability Groups weren’t able to be implemented properly on Azure as there was a limit of one IP address per VM. That problem was fixed some months back.

I recently needed to set up Availability Groups wholly within Azure. I followed the documentation here:

2014-06-21

Gartner tends to publish magic quadrant leader boards related to a variety of technology areas.

It was interesting to note that the latest leader board has Azure moved up into the Leader quadrant. The only other player in that quadrant is Amazon. That’s a big step up for the team, given the IaaS business really only went to GA in April last year.

You’ll find details here: Gartner Report

2014-05-31

In the sessions that I was attending in Redmond yesterday, I was interested to see the presenter discussing the idea of having individual database files in the cloud as some sort of bizarre option that’s now available in SQL Server 2014. I don’t see it as bizarre at all. However, I see two distinct use cases that make complete sense to me:

Overcoming Drive Limitations in Azure-based SQL Virtual Machines

2013-11-20

The Azure team keep rolling out improvements at an amazing pace. Scott Guthrie posted recently about the latest set of changes. Here are the ones that I think are most important for SQL people:

Import/Export Hard Drives

Even though Azure storage accounts can hold a very large amount of data, one of the big questions has always been about how to get that data into the storage account in the first place. That question is now answered because the new Windows Azure Import/Export service lets you ship hard drives directly to the Azure team for uploading. The reverse is also available. If you export a large amount of data to a storage account, you can move it onto a hard drive and have the drive sent to you.

2013-11-14

I had the distinct honour (honor) this week of recording a new SQL Down Under podcast with Dr David DeWitt from the Jim Gray Systems Lab at Microsoft. Anyone that has been to a PASS summit over the last few years would know that David seems to have single-handedly converted morning keynotes into must-attend events.

In this podcast, David explains his role, gives a philosophical view on where we’re at in the database industry and discusses core enhancements in SQL Server 2014.

2013-11-14