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• MSBuild / PowerShell: Copy SQL Server 2012 database to SQL Azure via BACPAC (for Continuous Integration)

  - by giveme5minutes

  I'm creating a continuous integration MSBuild script which copies a database in on-premise SQL Server 2012 to SQL Azure. Easy right? Methods After a fair bit of research I've come across the following methods: Use PowerShell to access the DAC library directly, then use the MSBuild PowerShell extension to wrap the script. This would require installing PowerShell 3 and working out how to make the MSBuild PowerShell extension work with it, as apparently MS moved the DAC API to a different namespace in the latest version of the library. PowerShell would give direct access to the API, but may require quite a bit of boilerplate. Use the sample DAC Framework Client Side Tools, which requires compiling them myself, as the downloads available from Codeplex only include the Hosted version. It would also require fixing them to use DAC 3.0 classes as they appear to currently use an earlier version of DAC. I could then call these tools from an <Exec Command="" /> in the MSBuild script. Less boilerplate and if I hit any bumps in the road I can just make changes to the source. Processes Using whichever method, the process could be either: Export from on-premise SQL Server 2012 to local BACPAC Upload BACPAC to blog storage Import BACPAC to SQL Azure via Hosted DAC Or: Export from on-premise SQL Server 2012 to local BACPAC Import BACPAC to SQL Azure via Client DAC Question All of the above seems to be quite a lot of effort for something that seems to be a standard feature... so before I start reinventing the wheel and documenting the results for all to see, is there something really obvious that I've missed here? Is there pre-written script that MS has released that I have not yet uncovered? There's an command in the GUI of SQL Server Management Studio 2012 that does EXACTLY what I'm trying to do (right click on local database, click "Tasks", click "Deploy Database to SQL Azure"). Surely if it's a few clicks in the GUI it must be a single command on the command line somewhere??

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• Automated backups for Windows Azure SQL Database

  - by Greg Low

  One of the questions that I've often been asked is about how you can backup databases in Windows Azure SQL Database. What we have had access to was the ability to export a database to a BACPAC. A BACPAC is basically just a zip file that contains a bunch of metadata along with a set of bcp files for each of the tables in the database. Each table in the database is exported one after the other, so this does not produce a transactionally-consistent backup at a specific point in time. To get a transactionally-consistent copy, you need a database that isn't in use.The easiest way to get a database that isn't in use is to use CREATE DATABASE AS COPY OF. This creates a new database as a transactionally-consistent copy of the database that you are copying. You can then use the export options to get a consistent BACPAC created.Previously, I've had to automate this process by myself. Given there was also no SQL Agent in Azure, I used a job in my on-premises SQL Server to do this, using a linked server configuration.Now there's a much simpler way. Windows Azure SQL Database now supports an automated export function. On the Configuration tab for the database, you need to enable the Automated Export function. You can configure how often the operation is performed for you, and which storage account will be used for the backups.It's important to consider the cost impacts of this as well. You are charged for how ever many databases are on your server on a given day. So if you enable a daily backup, you will double your database costs. Do not schedule the backups just before midnight UTC, as that could cause you to have three databases each day instead of one.This is a much needed addition to the capabilities. Scott Guthrie also posted about some other notable changes today, including a preview of a new premium offering for SQL Database. In addition to the Web and Business editions, there will now be a Premium edition that has reserved (rather than shared) resources. You can read about it all in Scott's post here: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2013/07/23/windows-azure-july-updates-sql-database-traffic-manager-autoscale-virtual-machines.aspx

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• Cloud Backup: Getting the Users' Backs Up

  - by Tony Davis

  On Wednesday last week, Microsoft announced that as of July 1, all data transfers into its Microsoft Azure cloud will be free (though you have to pay for transferring data out). On Thursday last week, SQL Azure in Western Europe went down. It was a relatively short outage, but since SQL Azure currently provides no easy way to take a standard backup of a database and store it locally, many people had no recourse but to wait patiently for their cloud-based app to resume. It seems that Microsoft are very keen encourage developers to move their data onto their cloud, but are developers ready to do it, given that such basic backup capabilities are lacking? Recently on Simple-Talk, Mike Mooney described a perfect use case for the Microsoft Cloud. They had a simple web-based application with a SQL Server backend; they could move the application to Windows Azure, and the data into SQL Azure and in the process free themselves from much of the hassle surrounding management and scaling of the hardware, network and so on. It was a great fit and yet it nearly didn't happen; lack of support for the BACKUP command almost proved a show-stopper. Of course, backups of Azure databases are always and have always been taken automatically, for disaster recovery purposes, but these are strictly on-cloud copies and as of now it is not possible to use them to them to restore a database to a particular point in time. It seems that none of those clever Microsoft people managed to predict the need to perform basic backups of Azure databases so that copies could be stored locally, outside the Azure universe. At the very least, as Mike points out, performing a local backup before a new deployment is more or less mandatory. Microsoft did at least note the sound of gnashing teeth and, as a stop-gap measure, offered SQL Azure Database Copy which basically allows you to create an online clone of your database, but this doesn't allow for storing local archives of the data. To that end MS has provided SQL Azure Import/Export, to package up and export a database and its data, using BACPACs. These BACPACs do not guarantee transactional consistency; for example, if a child table is modified after the parent is copied, then the copied database will be in inconsistent state (meaning, to add to the fun, BACPACs need to be created from a database copy). In any event, widespread problems with BACPAC's evil cousin, the DACPAC have been well-documented, and it seems likely that many will also give BACPAC the bum's rush. Finally, in a TechEd 2011 presentation tagged "SQL Azure Advanced Administration", it was announced that "backup and restore" were coming in the next SQL Azure CTP. And yet this still doesn't mean that we'll get simple backups as DBAs know and love them. What it does mean, at least, is the ability to restore any given database to a point in time within a 2-week window. For the time being, if you want a local copy of your data and don't want to brave the BACPAC, one is left with SSIS or BCP, creative use of schema and data comparison tools, or use of SQL Azure Backup (currently in beta) in order to perform this simple but vital task. Cheers, Tony.

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• Feature Updates to the Windows Azure Portal

  - by Clint Edmonson

  Lots of activity over at the Windows Azure portal this weekend, including some exciting new features and major improvements to existing features. Here are the highlights: Support for Managing Co-administrators Set up account co-administrators to allow others to share service management duties for each Azure subscription Import/Export support for SQL Databases Export existing SQL Azure databases to blob storage using SQL Server 2012’s BACPAC format. Create a new SQL Azure database from an existing BACPAC stored in blob storage Storage Container Management and Access Control Create blob storage containers directly within the portal Edit their public/private access settings Drill into storage containers and see the blobs contained within them Improved Cloud Service Status Notifications Detailed health status information about cloud services and roles as they transition between states Virtual Machine Experience Enhancements Option to automatically delete corresponding VHD files from blob storage when deleting VM disks Service Bus Management and Monitoring Ability to create and manage service bus Namespaces, Queues, Topics, Relays and Subscriptions Rich monitoring of Topics, Queues, and Subscriptions with detailed and customizable dashboard metrics Entity status (Topic, Queue, or Subscription) can be changed interactively via dashboard Direct links to the Access Control Services (ACS) namespaces when working with service bus access keys Media Services Monitoring Support Monitor encoding jobs that are queued for processing as well as active, failed and queued tasks for encoding jobs The above features are all now live in production and available to use immediately.  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using them today. Stay tuned to my twitter feed for Windows Azure announcements, updates, and links: @clinted Reference ID: P7VVJCM38V8R

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• Announcing: Improvements to the Windows Azure Portal

  - by ScottGu

  Earlier today we released a number of enhancements to the new Windows Azure Management Portal.  These new capabilities include: Service Bus Management and Monitoring Support for Managing Co-administrators Import/Export support for SQL Databases Virtual Machine Experience Enhancements Improved Cloud Service Status Notifications Media Services Monitoring Support Storage Container Creation and Access Control Support All of these improvements are now live in production and available to start using immediately.  Below are more details on them: Service Bus Management and Monitoring The new Windows Azure Management Portal now supports Service Bus management and monitoring. Service Bus provides rich messaging infrastructure that can sit between applications (or between cloud and on-premise environments) and allow them to communicate in a loosely coupled way for improved scale and resiliency. With the new Service Bus experience, you can now create and manage Service Bus Namespaces, Queues, Topics, Relays and Subscriptions. You can also get rich monitoring for Service Bus Queues, Topics and Subscriptions. To create a Service Bus namespace, you can now select the “Service Bus” tab in the Windows Azure portal and then simply select the CREATE command: Doing so will bring up a new “Create a Namespace” dialog that allows you to name and create a new Service Bus Namespace: Once created, you can obtain security credentials associated with the Namespace via the ACCESS KEY command. This gives you the ability to obtain the connection string associated with the service namespace. You can copy and paste these values into any application that requires these credentials: It is also now easy to create Service Bus Queues and Topics via the NEW experience in the portal drawer.  Simply click the NEW command and navigate to the “App Services” category to create a new Service Bus entity: Once you provision a new Queue or Topic it can be managed in the portal.  Clicking on a namespace will display all queues and topics within it: Clicking on an item in the list will allow you to drill down into a dashboard view that allows you to monitor the activity and traffic within it, as well as perform operations on it. For example, below is a view of an “orders” queue – note how we now surface both the incoming and outgoing message flow rate, as well as the total queue length and queue size: To monitor pub/sub subscriptions you can use the ADD METRICS command within a topic and select a specific subscription to monitor. Support for Managing Co-Administrators You can now add co-administrators for your Windows Azure subscription using the new Windows Azure Portal. This allows you to share management of your Windows Azure services with other users. Subscription co-administrators share the same administrative rights and permissions that service administrator have - except a co-administrator cannot change or view billing details about the account, nor remove the service administrator from a subscription. In the SETTINGS section, click on the ADMINISTRATORS tab, and select the ADD button to add a co-administrator to your subscription: To add a co-administrator, you specify the email address for a Microsoft account (formerly Windows Live ID) or an organizational account, and choose the subscription you want to add them to: You can later update the subscriptions that the co-administrator has access to by clicking on the EDIT button, and then select or deselect the subscriptions to which they belong. Import/Export Support for SQL Databases The Windows Azure administration portal now supports importing and exporting SQL Databases to/from Blob Storage.  Databases can be imported/exported to blob storage using the same BACPAC file format that is supported with SQL Server 2012.  Among other benefits, this makes it easy to copy and migrate databases between on-premise and cloud environments. SQL Databases now have an EXPORT command in the bottom drawer that when pressed will prompt you to save your database to a Windows Azure storage container: The UI allows you to choose an existing storage account or create a new one, as well as the name of the BACPAC file to persist in blob storage: You can also now import and create a new SQL Database by using the NEW command.  This will prompt you to select the storage container and file to import the database from: The Windows Azure Portal enables you to monitor the progress of import and export operations. If you choose to log out of the portal, you can come back later and check on the status of all of the operations in the new history tab of the SQL Database server – this shows your entire import and export history and the status (success/fail) of each: Enhancements to the Virtual Machine Experience One of the common pain-points we have heard from customers using the preview of our new Virtual Machine support has been the inability to delete the associated VHDs when a VM instance (or VM drive) gets deleted. Prior to today’s release the VHDs would continue to be in your storage account and accumulate storage charges. You can now navigate to the Disks tab within the Virtual Machine extension, select a VM disk to delete, and click the DELETE DISK command: When you click the DELETE DISK button you have the option to delete the disk + associated .VHD file (completely clearing it from storage).  Alternatively you can delete the disk but still retain a .VHD copy of it in storage. Improved Cloud Service Status Notifications The Windows Azure portal now exposes more information of the health status of role instances.  If any of the instances are in a non-running state, the status at the top of the dashboard will summarize the status (and update automatically as the role health changes): Clicking the instance hyperlink within this status summary view will navigate you to a detailed role instance view, and allow you to get more detailed health status of each of the instances.  The portal has been updated to provide more specific status information within this detailed view – giving you better visibility into the health of your app: Monitoring Support for Media Services Windows Azure Media Services allows you to create media processing jobs (for example: encoding media files) in your Windows Azure Media Services account. In the Windows Azure Portal, you can now monitor the number of encoding jobs that are queued up for processing as well as active, failed and queued tasks for encoding jobs. On your media services account dashboard, you can visualize the monitoring data for last 6 hours, 24 hours or 7 days. Storage Container Creation and Access Control Support You can now create Windows Azure Storage storage containers from within the Windows Azure Portal.  After selecting a storage account, you can navigate to the CONTAINERS tab and click the ADD CONTAINER command: This will display a dialog that lets you name the new container and control access to it: You can also update the access setting as well as container metadata of existing containers by selecting one and then using the new EDIT CONTAINER command: This will then bring up the edit container dialog that allows you to change and save its settings: In addition to creating and editing containers, you can click on them within the portal to drill-in and view blobs within them.  Summary The above features are all now live in production and available to use immediately.  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using them today.  Visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. We’ll have even more new features and enhancements coming later this month – including support for the recent Windows Server 2012 and .NET 4.5 releases (we will enable new web and worker role images with Windows Server 2012 and .NET 4.5, and support .NET 4.5 with Websites).  Keep an eye out on my blog for details as these new features become available. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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