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Category: Cloud

Migrating to Azure PostgreSQL Flexible Server from Single Server

Published 2024-10-18 by Kevin Feasel

Josephine Bush performs a migration:

Why Migrate to Flexible Server?

  • High availability and disaster recovery: Flexible Server provides higher availability with zone-redundant architecture.
  • Customizable maintenance windows: More control over when updates and maintenance tasks occur.
  • Performance improvements: Fine-tuned scaling and performance adjustments without downtime.
  • Enhanced security: With VNet integration and more advanced networking options.

Read on to learn more about by when you have to migrate and how you can perform the migration.

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Configuring the Fabric Service Principal to Support Storage APIs

Published 2024-10-17 by Kevin Feasel

Gilbert Quevauvilliers grants some permissions:

This blog post explains how to configure access for my Service Principal to interact with the Azure Storage API to use the API to get details for Microsoft Fabric Storage.

This is part of a blog post series where I am going to show you how to “View Total Storage consumed in Microsoft Fabric”

When I started this blog post I realized that I first need to explain how to configure the Service Principal authentication to interact with the Azure Storage API permissions. This is because in my notebook these steps are required for the notebook to run successfully.

Read on to find out how.

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Simplifying Azure Authorization with Managed Identities

Published 2024-10-16 by Kevin Feasel

MIka Sutinen doesn’t need a password:


Managed Identities in Azure provide an efficient and secure way for managing credentials when accessing databases, or other Azure resources. In this post, we build on my recent post about using Service Principal for database authentication, further exploring how we can leverage Managed Identities to simplify the process.

While Service Principals can make some parts of the access management simpler in Azure, you’re still left with several responsibilities in their management.

These responsibilities include rotating secrets and managing the lifecycle of the Service Principal, to name maybe the two most crucial ones. And if you have multiple applications, each with a separate Service Principal, this can be complex to manage.

Click through to learn more about managed identities and service principals, and how they work to link together Azure resources behind the scenes.

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Ingesting Blob Storage Data into SQL Server

Published 2024-10-16 by Kevin Feasel

Andy Brownsword brings in some data:

We may associate consuming data from Azure Storage with tools like Data Factory or even SSIS as we saw recently. We don’t always need the middle man though.

Here we’ll demonstrate how to use an External Data Source to perform the ingestion directly into SQL Server.

Click through for the solution. As a quick note, the TYPE attribute that Andy uses in CREATE EXTERNAL DATA SOURCE was necessary from SQL Server 2016 through SQL Server 2019, but no longer exists for SQL Server 2022. Instead, for SQL Server 2022, you’d switch the LOCATION to start with abs:// for Azure Blob Storage and PolyBase would infer the type from the protocol.

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Restarting Failed Control Flows in Azure Data Factory

Published 2024-10-15 by Kevin Feasel

Meagan Longoria doesn’t want to repeat good work:

I presented at SQL Saturday Pittshburgh this past weekend about populating your data warehouse with a metadata-driven, pattern-based approach. One of the benefits I mentioned is that it’s easy to employ this pattern for restartability.

For instance, let’s say I am loading data from 30 tables and 5 files into the staging area of my data mart or data warehouse, and one of table loads fails. I don’t want to reload the other tables I just loaded. I want to load the ones that have not been recently loaded. Or let’s say I have 5 dimensions and 4 facts, and I had a failure loading a fact table. I don’t want to reload my dimensions, and I only want to reload the failed facts. How do we accomplish this?

Read on to learn how.

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Querying Audit Log (.xel) Files in Azure SQL DB

Published 2024-10-14 by Kevin Feasel

Tanayankar Chakraborty reads an audit log:

A recent issue was brought to our attention that customers could not query .xel log files in an Azure SQL DB using t-sql command. The customers complained that when they ran the command, they received column headers but no content whereas they know that there is content in the logs because they were able to open them with SSMS using Merge Extended Event Files. Here was the T-sql command used by the customer:

select * from sys.fn_get_audit_file (‘https://mydbastorage.blob.core.windows.net/sqldbauditlogs/servername/dbname/SqlDbAuditing_Audit_NoRetention/*.xel’, NULL, NULL);

Click through for the solution, which came down to two separate issues.

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Online DR from SQL Server 2022 and Azure SQL MI Now Available

Published 2024-10-10 by Kevin Feasel

Djordje Jeremic announces general availability of one of the key selling points from SQL Server 2022:

Today, we are announcing the general availability of the following two major capabilities of the Managed Instance link feature with SQL Server 2022:

  • Two-way failover between SQL Server 2022 and SQL Managed Instance through the link to unlock true disaster recovery (DR) with Azure
  • Creating a link from SQL Managed Instance to SQL Server 2022 to unlock off-PaaS data mobility for regulatory and dev/test scenarios 

Click through for more detail.

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Permissions and BACPAC Files in Azure SQL DB

Published 2024-10-10 by Kevin Feasel

Roberto Yonekawa diagnoses an error:

We had a support request where the customer was getting an error when trying to export his Azure SQL Database to a bacpac file using the SqlPackage command-line utility.

Error message:

Microsoft.Data.Tools.Diagnostics.Tracer Error: 19 : 2024-08-21T16:10:56 : Microsoft.SqlServer.Dac.DacServicesException: One or more unsupported elements were found in the schema used as part of a data package.

Error SQL71627: The element Permission has property Permission set to a value that is not supported in Microsoft Azure SQL Database v12.

Click through for the specific issue Roberto found. I’d imagine that there are other permission sets that are incompatible with Azure SQL Database and would cause this error message to pop up as well.

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