Moving to public cloud such as Azure, AWS or even private cloud services you need to be tracking costs and seeing if you are “effective”. What is the best way of doing this with Microsoft Azure?
Tracking Costs in Microsoft Azure via Tags
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Tag Archives: Azure
Azure SQL Database – Error Logs?
Ok, so Azure SQL doesn’t really have its own error log based somewhere on a machine within \\MSSQL\Log directory but the closest thing you will get is a system catalog view called sys.event_log which is very useful. It will get you information about all sort of event types such as:
- Successful connections
- Failed connections
- Throttling issues
- Blocked by firewall attempts
- Connection termination
Azure Advisor – for Azure Data Platform
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could access one main dashboard / report that pulls in information from many tools such as security centre, SQL advisor and cost management tools? Well you can, thus giving you a focal point to implement best practices, called Azure Advisor. This is not specifically for Azure SQL Database, you can leverage this for most resources within Azure. Later in this blog post you see that I will use it as a focal point for my database infrastructure in Azure.
In the Azure portal under services look for “advisor”
Common Things Admins Miss in Azure SQL DB
This is by no means a complete list but more of a personal list of features I have seen not setup or just missed out when looking at Azure SQL DB. After reading, not only will I hope that you agree but it may provoke you to double check your setups.
Azure SQL Database – Automatic Tuning – Have you enabled it?
Do you enable this setting to allow automatic tuning to care of all your performance needs? Well not ALL your needs, more so:
- CREATE INDEX
- DROP INDEX
- FORCE LAST GOOD PLAN
Azure SQL Best Practices?
A way to enforce good practice and standards is by Azure Policy. As stated by Microsoft “Azure Policy is a service in Azure that you use to create, assign, and manage policies. These policies enforce different rules and effects over your resources, so those resources stay compliant with your corporate standards and service level agreements”. Pretty important stuff if you ask me.
SQL Server Backup / Restore from 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.
Deadlocks – Azure SQL Database
Would you like to troubleshoot a deadlock in Azure SQL Database? To do this you probably will be after the deadlock graph. So does this mean that you need to setup your own extended event session? No, it doesn’t.
Azure SQL Database Failover – Grace Period?
The Azure SQL Database service triggers an automatic failover after a failure is detected and the grace period has expired. What is the grace period? You can find this setting when building a failover group.
Backup Techniques for SQL Server 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.
I prefer not setting up manual backups to storage accounts, I have done it, I just find it painful to setup/support/fix. So my choice would be automated backup vs “Azure backup” for SQL VM. What’s the difference?
All About Data 