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Storing SQL Server Backups in Cloudflare R2

Daniel Hutmacher saves a buck:

R2 is Cloudflare’s own implementation of AWS S3 storage, with some big benefits – one of them being no egress fees, which is great if you want to publish or distribute a lot of data (like I did with this demo database). In this post, I thought I’d briefly document how to set up R2, and how to use it to back up and restore your SQL Server databases.

You’ll need a Cloudflare account to follow along. The account and a lot of their services are free, but R2 storage obviously comes with a small cost. For scale, I’m running an almost-terabyte bucket at just a couple of dollars per month.

Given the number of times I’ve pushed Daniel’s excellent Chicago parking tickets database (including right now—it’s a great database that I’ve used in several presentations and videos!), the lack of egress charges is pretty big.