Press "Enter" to skip to content

Category: Cloud

Comparing Performance of Azure SQL Databases

Published 2022-09-12 by Kevin Feasel

Reitse Eskens begins an interesting series:

The trigger for this feast were a number of questions from my employer. What database tier and SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) should we choose for customer C. Well, the answer depends on their budget and the performance they’re expecting. And we didn’t have a conclusive answer. Microsoft will provide you with their statistics on database performance, but what does that mean in real life. Because no matter what the good people in Redmond can come up with as databases, we as data engineers can do worse. Much worse.

So, I created some horrible query’s to insert, select and delete data and fired them off to a database. My own laptop with nvme disks provided the baseline, after that I gradually worked my way up from the Basic DTU database to the Hyperscale database.

This first post is an introduction to the method and laying out expectations. I’m looking forward to the remaining posts in the series.

Comments closed

Deploying an Arc-Enabled SQL Managed Instance

Published 2022-09-12 by Kevin Feasel

Warwick Rudd continues a series on Azure Arc-enabled data services:

Now that we have our Azure Arc-enabled Data Controller configured and available, we can now deploy our first Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance into our environment. As previously mentioned depending on the type of configuration required for your environment with your Arc-enabled Data Controller (Directly connected or Indirectly connected modes) this will dictate the approach available for you to setup / configure your Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance.

Click through for a step-by-step guide.

Comments closed

Inserting into Azure Blob Storage from SQL Server 2022

Published 2022-09-09 by Kevin Feasel

I continue a series on data virtualization in SQL Server 2022:

Several years ago, I wrote a blog post on how to insert data into Azure Blob Storage from SQL Server using PolyBase. That technique used PolyBase V1: the Java connector for Hadoop. With SQL Server 2022 eliminating that connector, we’re going to learn the new method.

This is one of the larger practical differences in data virtualization with SQL Server 2022.

Comments closed

Deploying a Streamlit App to RStudio Connect

Published 2022-09-09 by Kevin Feasel

Parisa Gregg wraps up a series:

RStudio Connect is a platform which is well known for providing the ability to deploy and share R applications such as Shiny apps and Plumber APIs as well as plots, models and R Markdown reports. However, despite the name, it is not just for R developers (hence their recent announcement). RStudio Connect also supports a growing number of Python applications, API services including Flask and FastAPI and interactive web based apps such as Bokeh and Streamlit.

In this post we will look at how to deploy a Streamlit application to RStudio Connect. Streamlit is a framework for creating interactive web apps for data visualisation in Python. It’s API makes it very easy and quick to display data and create interactive widgets from just a regular Python script.

Click through for the step-by-step process.

Comments closed

Backup Options for Cosmos DB

Published 2022-09-09 by Kevin Feasel

Manvendra Singh takes a backup:

This article will explore backup options available in the Azure Cosmos DB service. Backups are very important to safeguard our data in case of data corruption, data deletion, system failure, or any unforeseen circumstances like DR. We have planned, configured, and managed it for our on-prem databases whether it is SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, or system files on various machines. DBAs and Infrastructure admins have ensured to keep a backup of all these systems to safeguard their data. Similarly, we must also secure our data hosted in a cloud environment for any services whether it is Azure VMs, Azure SQL, Cosmos Db accounts, or any other services. Today we will talk about backup options available to secure cosmos DB databases and their contents.

Click through for those two options.

Comments closed

Oracle on Azure Frequently Asked Questions

Published 2022-09-09 by Kevin Feasel

Kellyn Pot’vin-Gorman spreads information:

A lot of DBAs aren’t as familiar with Oracle DataGuard as many would think.  Even though it’s a phenomenal product, they may have never used it, so knowing the ins and outs of the best Oracle product to use with Oracle on Azure is important.

I highly recommend the following documentation and guidelines from Oracle.  The Product team in charge of DataGuard is fantastic at Oracle, so why go anywhere else to learn about this?

Oracle Data Guard Concepts and Administration, 19c

If you are in the situation where you’re thinking about moving your Oracle servers to Azure, this is a good starting point.

Comments closed

Principal Type not Supported Errors in Azure SQL DB/MI

Published 2022-09-07 by Kevin Feasel

Sabrin Alsahsah takes us through a few common causes of Azure Active Directory errors in Azure SQL Database and SQL Managed Instances:

We received some support cases when customers encounter the error below while trying to add an AAD security group to their Azure SQL Database or Azure SQL managed instance. In this blog article, we will be listing a few points to be checked to troubleshoot this error and can help you to identify the cause.

Msg 33130, Level 16, State 1, Line 1

Principal ‘XXXXXX’ could not be found or this principal type is not supported.

Read on for several reasons why things might be going wrong.

Comments closed

Connecting to Azure Blob Storage with SQL Server 2022

Published 2022-09-06 by Kevin Feasel

I take a look back at the past and forward to the future:

PolyBase used to connect to Azure Blob Storage. Specifically, you could use the wasbs:// protocol and connect to Azure Blob Storage over WebHDFS. Here’s an example of an external data source which would work for SQL Server 2016 through 2019:

SQL Server 2022 changes its mechanisms around Azure Blob Storage a little bit, though I think the changes are sensible.

Comments closed

Recursive Flows in Power Automate

Published 2022-09-06 by Kevin Feasel

Imke Feldmann starts a new series:

If you want to traverse organisational hierarchies, walk through nested folder structures or create nested Power BI metrics from an Excel table for example, you need some sort of recursive logic. In this article I will introduce you to the basic method of recursive flows in Power Automate. In upcoming articles I will share some of the flows for the above mentioned use cases.

Read on for an intuitive understanding of what recursion is as well as how you can implement it in a Power Automate flow.

Comments closed

Deploying SQL Server via AKS

Published 2022-09-02 by Kevin Feasel

Rajendra Gupta needs to deploy a SQL Server container:

This article uses Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) to deploy and manage the Kubernetes cluster. It is a fully managed service that offers serverless Kubernetes with integrated CI/CD solutions, enterprise-grade security, and governance.

You can navigate to https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/services/kubernetes-service/#overview and try Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

Read on for an overview of Azure Kubernetes Service and how you can get a SQL Server on Linux container running atop it.

Comments closed