A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Andy Brownsword saves some quid:
If you have a Self-Hosted Integration Runtime (SHIR, or IR for short here) on an Azure Virtual Machine (VM), there’s a cost to keep it online. When used intermittently – for example during batch processes – this is inefficient for costs as you’re paying for the compute you don’t need. One way to alleviate this is by controlling uptime of the environment manually, only bringing it online for as long as needed.
Read on to see how to do this.
Leave a CommentDeb Melkin is looking forward to a pair of features:
When I look at this release, I feel like I’ve been more tuned into what’s coming out than any other. I’m still not sure how that happened. But I think overall it’s a good thing because there really is a lot being packed into this release. If you’re just trying to figure out now, you’re already behind.
There are really 2 features that I’m really excited about:
Read on to learn more about both of them.
Leave a CommentTwinkle Cyril makes an announcement:
Managing data consistency during ETL has always been a challenge for our customers. Dashboards break, KPIs fluctuate, and compliance audits become painful when reporting hits ‘half-loaded’ data. With Warehouse Snapshots, Microsoft Fabric solves this by giving you a stable, read-only view of your warehouse at a specific point in time and now, this capability is Generally Available! Think of this as a true time travel database, an industry-first capability that sets us apart.
I wonder how much they differ from the database snapshots available in SQL Server.
Leave a CommentAmy Abel describes an architecture:
I’ve been learning about Azure Managed Cassandra recently, and it’s very different from the usual relational SQL Server database. The documentation and tutorials can seem confusing at first, but once I broke things down it was easier to understand basic concepts.
Read on for a warning about different flavors of Cassandra, as well as how Microsoft has organized things in their implementation of Cassandra.
Leave a CommentAleksey Vitsko enumerates available options:
You may be familiar with high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) features that are available in SQL Server and have experience configuring and managing them. But you have ever heard of or tried Azure high availability or Azure disaster recovery features. How can I learn more about what Azure brings in terms of HA and DR for Azure SQL offerings – including SQL VMs?
Read on for a variety of options depending upon whether you’re using SQL Server on a VM, Azure SQL Database, or Azure SQL Managed Instance.
Leave a CommentAndy Cutler begins a new series on Microsoft Fabric architecture:
Our Fabric Architecture journey starts with Azure Tenants (the kick-off blog in this series is here with a few jumping-off links to get started with thinking about Fabric Architecture). If you’re ready to spent time sketching out your Fabric Capacity planning, workspace strategy, domain topology, lakehouse/warehouse creation, data loading processes…you might want to stop for a minute and think about tenants. The question I’d like you to consider is “What do I need to know when working with a single or a multi-tenancy approach?” Let’s unpack this question because while it might sound like a simple list, it actually shapes your governance, scalability, and Fabric operational model. If you’re a seasoned Azure Architect veteran then you already know how to decide between single and multi-tenant cloud rollouts (also, please comment if you have anything to add please), if you work with Fabric/Data and don’t really dive into Azure architecture on a daily basis then please stick around. Hopefully this blog gets you thinking about single/multi-tenant architectures and the benefits/costs.
Read on for a dive into what tenants are, the benefits of single- versus multi-tenancy, and how it all ties into Fabric.
Leave a CommentAndy Brownsword flips the script:
Last week we looked at calling a Data Factory Pipeline from a Logic App. This week I thought we’d balance it out by taking a look at calling a Logic App from an Azure Data Factory (ADF) Pipeline.
When building the Logic App last week we had to create our own polling mechanism to check for completion of the pipeline. The process is much simpler in the opposite direction. I specifically want to highlight two approaches, and save some pennies whilst we’re at it.
I am all about saving pennies, so be sure to check out that section as well.
Leave a CommentAndy Brownsword automates a workflow:
When building Azure Logic Apps we can use the Azure Data Factory connector to start a pipeline. However that action simply triggers a pipeline and doesn’t wait for it to finish. If your downstream logic depends on the output – for example to collect a file – this can cause issues.
In this post I’ll demonstrate how to control the Logic App flow to wait for the pipeline to complete before proceeding.
Read on to see how, as well as some additional ideas of how to improve the pattern.
Leave a CommentFollowing on from my blog post a few months ago about cool stuff in the Fabric Toolbox, there is now another really useful solution available there that anyone with Fabric capacities should check out: Fabric Cost Analysis (or FCA). If you have Fabric capacities it’s important to be able to monitor your Azure costs relating to them, so why not monitor your Fabric costs using a solution built using Fabric itself? This is what the folks behind FCA (who include Romain Casteres, author of this very useful blog post on FinOps for Fabric, plus Cédric Dupui, Manel Omani and Antoine Richet) decided to build and share freely with the community.
Click through to see how it works, and check out the FCA link in the graf above to get the code.
Comments closedSumiran Tandon makes an announcement:
Customer managed keys were launched in preview, offering workspace administrators the ability to use keys in Azure Key Vault and Managed HSM, to protect data in certain Fabric items. Now, we are extending the encryption support to more Fabric workloads. You can now create Fabric Warehouses, Notebooks and utilize the SQL Analytics Endpoint in workspaces enabled with encryption using your keys. The changes are rolling out and should be available in all regions over the next few days.
Freddie Santos digs into what this means for Fabric Warehouse and the SQL analytics endpoint:
Fabric already ensures that your data is encrypted at rest using Microsoft-managed keys. But for many organizations—especially in regulated industries—encryption alone isn’t enough. They need the ability to control and manage the keys that protect their data, aligning with internal compliance requirements, regulatory standards, and governance best practices.
I know that there are enough companies where this is absolutely necessary for adoption of a product, but I should point out that even without bringing your own key, Microsoft does use their own generated keys to encrypt your data at rest.
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