Performance monitoring and troubleshooting in SQL Server is a vast topic. In SQL Server 2005, dynamic management views, also known as DMV’s, have been introduced and became an essential helping tool for diagnosing SQL Server performance problems. At the same time, we can use dynamic management views for Azure SQL Database. Some of them can differ from SQL Server on-premise database but the logic of work is still the same. Microsoft has very good documentation about dynamic management views. The only thing, you need to be careful about the version and product validation of dynamic management views. Read More
Tag: azure sql
Migrating SQL Server Database to Azure SQL (PaaS)
In this article, we will highlight SQL Server Data migration to Azure SQL (PaaS). You can find different approaches for this migration process because SQL Server offers different types of tools and features for this migration. Some of these are:
- Database Migration Assistant
- SQL Server Management Studio Deployment Wizard
- SQL Server to Azure SQL replication
These migration approaches have some pros and cons. But if you ask my opinion, Data Migration Assistant is better than others because, in this migration process, you will face fewer migration problems or issues. Data Migration Assistant will be more helpful to handle these issues.
In this article, we will specifically mention Database Migration Assistant, also known as DMA. At the same time, we will make a small demo of SQL Server Management Studio Deployment Wizard.
Choosing Azure SQL Purchase Model and Service Tier
When we are beginning to think of migrating our on-premises databases to Azure SQL, we have to decide on a proper purchase model, a service tier, and a performance level. Before starting the Azure SQL migration process, we have to find logical and provable answers to the following questions:
- Which purchase model is suitable for my apps and business requirements?
- How much budget do I need?
- Which performance level meets my requirements?
- Can I achieve the acceptable performance of my apps?
Configuring Azure SQL Long-term Backup Retention
Backup is the most important case for database administration because it provides business continuity solutions for high availability and disaster recovery. For this reason, Azure SQL database (PaaS: platform as a service) can make a backup automatically and restore it at a point in time. However, the retention period of backup files changes according to the service tiers.
Azure SQL Geo-Replication and Failover Groups
Azure SQL offers different types of business continuity solutions. One of these solutions is Geo-Replication that provides an asynchronous database copy. You can store this copy in the same or different data center locations (regions). There can be four readable database copies. In the documentation of Microsoft notes, the recovery point objective (RPO is the maximum acceptable amount of data loss measured in time) is less than 5 seconds. If we want to automate and make (users will not affect) failover mechanism transparent, we have to create the auto-failover group.
Getting Started with SQL Server 2017 on Linux in the Azure portal
SQL Server 2017 now is considered as a hybrid database enterprise solution as it expands its market and is ported to other operating system platforms. It also includes mainstream support for Linux machines. The Cloud makes the life of administrator much easier, now it’s no longer daunting task to configure the SQL Server instance. The easiest way to explore SQL Server on Linux is to provision a virtual machine through Microsoft Azure portal – portal.azure.com. The Linux azure virtual machine will come pre-configured with Linux and SQL Server 2017.
Monitoring Azure SQL Database with Azure SQL Analytics
The most important and challenging responsibility of a database administrator is monitoring performance metrics. Because monitoring performance and troubleshooting performance issues are considered to be difficult. For this reason, we need diagnostic and monitoring tools to measure performance counters and metrics. For Azure SQL there is a tool which is named SQL Analytics. With this tool, we can measure and monitor Azure SQL databases and elastic pools. At the same time, we can create alerts for notifications. SQL Analytics offers performance metrics in graphical form. In this article, we will learn how to enable Azure SQL Analytics. Read More
Azure SQL Database Automatic Tuning
Microsoft has recently announced an incredible new feature – automatic tuning in Azure SQL Database. To be honest, I am thoroughly impressed with this feature because Microsoft engineers have sophisticatedly used artificial intelligence in SQL Azure performance tuning. The aim is to monitor Azure SQL database and send these observations to the built-in intelligence service that generates some recommendations. They can be applied at offpeak times. This feature has also simplified the work of database administrators; they don’t have to worry about SQL Azure database performance now.
Query Performance Insight: Discovering What Consumes Resources of Your Azure SQL Database?
In this post, I’d like to take a brief look at the Query Performance Insight — SQL Azure tool which will help you to identify the most expensive queries in your database.
Query Performance Insights was announced in early October 2015. To understand what it is, let’s think about how do you usually learn that the database performance got down? Probably, you are receiving emails from your clients or it takes an hour to create a weekly report instead of a several minutes, or maybe, your application starts throwing exceptions. Read More