A Fine Slice Of SQL Server
Arun Sirpal takes us through restoration of a database from a URL:
I think many have covered how you should backup your SQL Server database to Azure storage (also known as backup to URL) but what about restoring? Lets assume you have setup backups and they are working, this is what I usually do.
It’s very similar to restoration of databases from disk, so nothing too crazy.
Comments closedArun Sirpal looks at three techniques for backing up SQL Server running on Azure virtual machines:
In the previous blog post I did a quick overview building a SQL VM (imaged) in Azure. It is now time to clarify some backup techniques because it can get confusing.
At a high level there are 3 techniques.
– Automated backup.
– Azure backup for SQL VM (that’s what MS call it).
– Manual backup, for example backup to URL.
Read on to learn more about each.
Comments closedArun Sirpal explains the different types of Azure SQL Database available to us:
I want to do a quick summary post of the many different types of Azure SQL Database available and I am not talking about elastic pools, VMs etc, more so the singleton type.
Azure SQL Database (I call normal mode) – A choice between the DTU model (Basic, Standard and Premium) and vCore (General Purpose and Business Critical). Within this space there are two different architecture types used by Microsoft under the covers.
As the product expands, we get more and more options, and Arun clarifies where each fits.
Comments closedArun Sirpal explains what an Azure Shared Access Signature is:
Using a Shared Access Signature (SAS) is usually the best way to control access rights to Azure storage resources (like a container for backups) without exposing the primary / secondary storage keys. It is based on a URI and this is what I want to look at today.
Read on to learn about the components which make up a Shared Access Signature.
Comments closedArun Sirpal takes us through Azure Storage Explorer:
I only ever use the storage explorer when managing my blobs, files, queues within storage accounts. It is your single view access point for all your storage needs and I totally recommend downloading it and using it (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/features/storage-explorer/).
Why do I like using it? I am sure there are more reasons, but these are personal to me.
Click through for Arun’s reasons as well as installation basics.
Comments closedArun Sirpal explains an error message on Azure SQL Database:
msg 7928, Level 16, State 1, Line 3
The database snapshot for online checks could not be created. Either the reason is given in a previous error or one of the underlying volumes does not support sparse files or alternate streams. Attempting to get exclusive access to run checks offline.
Msg 8921, Level 16, State 3, Line 3
Check terminated. A failure was detected while collecting facts. Possibly tempdb out of space or a system table is inconsistent. Check previous errors.
Read on to see what this means, as well as what it means for you.
Comments closedArun Sirpal takes us through online clustered columnstore index creation in Azure SQL Database:
What tier do you need to create one of these things? Let’s see.
CREATECLUSTERED COLUMNSTORE INDEXcciSales ON[SalesLT].[ProductModelProductDescription] WITH( ONLINE = ON)But I get this message, Msg 40536, Level 16, State 32, Line 1
‘COLUMNSTORE’ is not supported in this service tier of the database. See Books Online for more details on feature support in different service tiers of Windows Azure SQL Database.
Read on to see the minimum tier which allows online creation of clustered columnstore indexes.
Comments closedArun Sirpal wants to shuffle deck chairs in Azure:
As you can see I have a standard elastic pool which has 7 databases within it. I also have CloudDB and CRMDB that are single databases but not yet part of my elastic pool. How do I move them into it?
Click through to learn how to do this.
Comments closedArun Sirpal notes a change to the Azure SQL Database Service Level Agreement:
I am sure many missed the updates to Azure SQL Database SLA (Service Level Agreement). It used to be 99.99% across all tiers but split between two different high-availability architectural models. Basic, Standard and General Purpose tiers had its own model and the Premium / Business Critical tiers had a different one.
Read on to see the change.
Comments closedArun Sirpal wants to change the report interval for a Query Store report:
While not specific to SQL Server 2019 (I was using this version to do some testing) I was struggling to find how to change the time period of analysis for the Query Store reports within SSMS.
This is not a ground breaking post but hopefully a helpful one! So, I load up the “Top 25 resource consumers” report and by default it will show data for the past hour. So what do you do, or should I say what do you click to change the time interval for the report?
Read on for the two screenshots which answer this question for you.
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