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Category: Cloud

Executing SQL Statements in Azure Data Factory

Published 2022-03-07 by Kevin Feasel

Abhishek Narain announces a pretty nice improvement to Azure Data Factory and Synapse Pipelines:

We are introducing a Script activity in pipelines that provide the ability to execute single or multiple SQL statements.  

Using the script activity, you can execute common operations with Data Manipulation Language (DML), and Data Definition Language (DDL). DML statements like SELECT, UPDATE, and INSERT let users retrieve, store, modify, delete, insert and update data in the database. DDL statements like CREATE, ALTER, and DROP allow a database manager to create, modify, and remove database objects such as tables, indexes, and users.

Be sure to read the limitations at the bottom, however.

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Deleting an RDS Instance

Published 2022-03-01 by Kevin Feasel

Chad Callihan takes out the trash:

We’ve created an AWS RDS instance and logged into it successfully. One thing to remember when creating test instances is when to them when you’re finished. While a lot of test instances I’ve created have been free tier, it’s still good to clean up rather than leave instances lingering. Today, let’s clean up a test instance.

Click through for the step-by-step on how to do this.

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Form Recognizer Updates

Published 2022-02-25 by Kevin Feasel

Vinod Kurpad shares some news:

Form Recognizer continues to improve product capabilities with improved models, support for additional document types and containerized solutions that run in the cloud or on premises either connected or fully disconnected for scenarios where containers need to run in an isolated environment. Recent updates to pricing include commitment tiers for customers who have a predictable volume of documents. Starting February 15th, the pricing for Invoices and General Document API will drop to $10 per 1000 pages, an 80% reduction, making it possible for customers to use invoices and the general document APIs for high volume scenarios to significantly lower cost while providing additional value.

That’s a pretty big improvement.

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Authenticating with s5cmd

Published 2022-02-25 by Kevin Feasel

Anthony Nocentino has the need for speed. And authentication:

At work, I get to work with some fantastic tech that pushes the boundaries of performance. I needed to do some performance testing from a Windows server into a FlashBlade using s3. I reached out to a colleague of mine, Joshua Robinson, who told me about s5cmd. s5cmd is a very fast, parallel s3 compatible command-line client.

Check out Joshua’s post for some performance numbers. Here’s a direct quote from his post.

But it doesn’t matter how fast it is if you can’t connect, so Anthony shows us how to do just that.

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Deploying SQL Scripts via Azure Release Pipelines

Published 2022-02-24 by Kevin Feasel

Meagan Longoria solves a problem:

We chose release pipelines over the YAML pipelines because it was easier to manage for the client and pretty quick to set up. While I had done this before, I had a couple of new challenges:

– I was deploying to an Azure SQL managed instance that had no public endpoint.

– There were multiple databases for which there may or may not be a change script to execute in each release.

This took a bit longer than I expected, and I enlisted my coworker Bill to help me work through the final details.

Read on to see how Meagan and Bill solved the problem.

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Mission-Critical Azure Architectures

Published 2022-02-23 by Kevin Feasel

Ben Brauer has some reference guidelines:

The AlwaysOn project strives to address the challenges of building mission-critical applications by providing organizations with a prescriptive architectural approach for the Microsoft Cloud.

It leverages lessons from numerous customer applications and first-party solutions, and applies Well-Architected best practices to provide actionable and authoritative guidance for building and operating a highly reliable solutions on Azure at-scale.

I guess marketing is calling it “AlwaysOn” again. Until they call it Always On. Or AlWaYsOn.

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Methods to Export Azure SQL Database

Published 2022-02-22 by Kevin Feasel

Abhishek Shaha and Ahmed Mahmoud enumerate techniques to export an Azure SQL Database:

Export Azure SQL Database is a common request for Azure SQL DB customers, in this article we are going to list down some advanced scenarios, on how this can be achievable through various tools not limited to Azure Portal, Azure CLI and PowerShell. In addition, this article will provide alternative methods when it comes to private endpoints and deny public access.

Click through for several options.

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What Comes after the Well-Architected Framework Review

Published 2022-02-18 by Kevin Feasel

Ben Brauer takes us through the next step:

Congratulations! You’ve finished your Well-Architected Review of a workload, giving you a better understanding of where it could be fortified along the five pillars: Security, Reliability, Operational Excellence, Performance Efficiency and Cost Optimization. You have received Microsoft’s best practices as recommendations based on your answers to questions specific to each pillar.

The report (example below) shows a Well-Architected score for each pillar, as well as prioritized recommendations that allows for you to focus on biggest areas of impact. A great example is virtual machine right sizing. You can significantly lower your costs if you know which VM is best suited for your workload type.

By the way, if you have Azure resources, I highly recommend checking out the Well-Architected Framework assessment link there. It can take a very long time to go through because of just how many questions there are; that said, the results are also pretty specific and can be immediately helpful.

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