It is quite a common requirement to restore a copy of a database to the same Azure SQL server, you just issue a COPY OF command. What if you need to restore a copy to a different target Azure SQL server? Well its similar, just with a slight difference in that you need to refer back to the source server within your code.
Since SQL Server 2016 we could leverage Microsoft Azure to dynamically move “cold” portions of data away from on-premises storage for longer retention time periods. Whilst in theory being a great idea the cost was a blocker for some and with a cumbersome setup process. SQL Server 2019 addresses this by making the costs of storing the data in the cloud more competitive and making the setup more streamlined with the use of the Data Migration Assistant (DMA) tool and SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio).
Note: DMA tool replaces the older Upgrade Advisor tool. To install DMA please see the following link https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/dma/dma-overview?view=sql-server-ver15.
Recently I got to a stage where I leveraged Databricks to the best of my ability to join couple of CSV files together, play around some aggregations and then output it back to a different mount point ( based on Azure Storage) as a parquet file, I decided that I actually wanted to move this data into Azure SQL DB, which you may want to do one day.
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.
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.
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?
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