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159 search results for "arun sirpal"

Scaling an Azure SQL Managed Instance

Published 2021-10-21 by Kevin Feasel

Arun Sirpal wants more power:

No doubt there will be times where you need to scale up the actual instance in terms of vCores but also you may want to move across tiers (for example General Purpose to Business Critical). If you remember a few blog posts ago I said it was really important to plan for these activities during the build phase, more specifically get the subnet range right. If you done that then you will be fine.

Click through for the process, though do note the amount of time it takes. One of the early ideals of cloud processing would be that you could seamlessly scale up and down with no effects on the end user. In some services (especially things like function apps, web apps, and VMs in a Kubernetes pod), you get that experience. When it comes to almost anything data-related, though, immediate scaling is a hard no, to the point where I’d assume you can’t afford the downtime to do it until proven otherwise.

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Performing a Restore to SQL Managed Instance

Published 2021-10-13 by Kevin Feasel

Arun Sirpal shows us how to perform a backup and restoration from an on-premises SQL Server to Azure SQL Managed Instance:

So in the last blog we confirmed that we could move to SQL MI via some analysis, this is now time to actually do a backup and restore via URLs to move data.

Quite simply you need to BACKUP to URL (Azure Storage container) and the setup requirement is that you need to create a SQL credential that holds the SAS token – this is what allows authentication to the container to take place. 

Click through for the process.

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A Primer on Azure Kubernetes Service

Published 2021-07-21 by Kevin Feasel

Arun Sirpal gives us a brief introduction of Azure Kubernetes Service:

You have the ability to run these on-premises (complex) or in a cloud service, like AWS or Azure. Hence AKS – Azure Kubernetes Service which helps reduce the complexity and operational overhead of managing Kubernetes by offloading much of that responsibility to Microsoft. You may be wondering how does containers relate to this? It was something on my mind when I first entered into this technology. Remember that containers is the next step beyond traditional virtualisation, you can run SQL Server Linux in containers, as an example. I then look at AKS as the “management” layer of the container solution, carrying out tasks such as scheduling, scaling, health, load balancing and host management.

Click through for more information.

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SQL Server on Azure Container Instances

Published 2021-07-09 by Kevin Feasel

Arun Sirpal has a series for us. Part 1 involves spinning up SQL Server on ACI:

This is Microsoft’s serverless technology which allows us to deploy containers without having to worry about managing the underlying hardware. It’s a way to get access to SQL fast (faster than traditional methods like installing a virtual machine) to do things like test code fixes etc.

There a couple of ways of doing this, you can use the portal, PowerShell or Azure CLI, I actually like Azure CLI.

Part 2 gives you an idea of what you get:

In the last post we built an image of SQL server 2019 Linux hosted in Azure Container Instance for fast access to SQL server. So, your next question is probably, lets see some database action?

When you connect to SSMS its not different, the feel and look, is, SQL server. Lets have a tour.

The normal warning with Azure Container Instances is that they’re great for development and testing efforts (in part because of how inexpensive it is compared to alternatives on Azure) but won’t have the same uptime or high availability guarantees that a service like Azure Kubernetes Service will have.

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Long-Term Backups on Azure SQL Database

Published 2021-02-05 by Kevin Feasel

Arun Sirpal takes us through a fairly new feature in Azure SQL Database:

There is a new (ish) interface to looking and configuring backups for your Azure SQL Database. This can be found within the settings section of the SQL Server.

As you can see, by default we have 7 days retention to allow for PITR – Point In Time Recovery, anything longer you will need to setup long term retention.

Click through to see how to set this up.

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DTUs and vCores in Azure SQL Database

Published 2021-01-20 by Kevin Feasel

Arun Sirpal gives us one take on whether to use DTUs or vCores for Azure SQL Database:

If you are building database solutions in Azure , using Azure SQL Database then you will know that you have a purchasing option decision to make. That being should you use a vCore model or DTU approach?

Arun prefers the vCore model for solid reasons. I agree with the sentiment when we’re talking about production databases. For small-scale, personal stuff, however, the bottom end of the DTU model is much less expensive.

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GREATEST and LEAST in Azure SQL Database

Published 2020-11-27 by Kevin Feasel

Arun Sirpal shows off some missing functionality in SQL Server:

Being in the cloud does have many benefits, from lower administration to fast scaling but another “side effect” of operating in Azure SQL Database is the cloud first nature of changes. By this I basically mean new features always get pushed to Azure first before the classic on-premises version so some gems come to light.

Here is one for you. Have you ever wanted MySQL’s functinality to apply LEAST() and GREATEST() argument? Well, you can now, in Azure.

I can’t say that I would use this every day or anything, but I have felt the pain of not having it. There are workarounds, though nothing as convenient as syntax. Hopefully this shows up on-prem in the next version of SQL Server.

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Adding Libraries in Databricks

Published 2020-11-03 by Kevin Feasel

Arun Sirpal has some third-party libraries to add:

It is a really common requirement to add specific libraries to databricks. Libraries can be written in Python, Java, Scala, and R. You can upload Java, Scala, and Python libraries and point to external packages in PyPI, Maven, and CRAN repositories.

Libraries can be added in 3 scopes. Workspace, Notebook-scoped and cluster. I want to show you have easy it is to add (and search) for a library that you can add to the cluster, so that all notebooks attached to the cluster can leverage the library.

I’m hoping that loading libraries in Azure Synapse Analytics will, at some point, be this convenient.

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Using Key Vault in Azure Databricks

Published 2020-10-29 by Kevin Feasel

Arun Sirpal shows us how easy it is to tie Azure Key Vault into Azure Databricks:

The key vault should always be a core component of your Azure design because we can store keys, secrets, certicates thus abstract / hide the true connection string within files. When working with databricks to mount storage to ingest your data and query it ideally you should be leveraging this to create secrets and secret scopes.

Click through for a demo.

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