SQL Server 2014 – The Hybrid platform Integration with Windows Azure features in SQL Server 2014

About me Shy Engelberg, SQL Server consultant

Disclaimer This presentation is mostly an overview of capabilities, not a technical drilldown. I will talk a lot about cost, but I will not go into detailed pricing. The demos are to show you how it’s done, not to dive in. Some or all of the DBs in the demos are empty. There are some demos that fail. Bugs are opened in Connect. (it’s a CTP after all) I will try to answer questions, but not sure if time permits. if I will not answer your question, feel free to contact me after the presentation or in any other way.

Agenda About the Cloud Windows Azure storage Deploy DB to Azure VM Windows Azure VMs Data files in windows Azure Backup to Azure DR to the cloud

The Cloud Has been around since the internet became public. (almost forever) It’s just a trendy buzzword that means receiving services from a remote provider, usually over the internet.

How and why did it start? Demand - IT Organizations and End users No hardware acquisition costs No software licenses or upgrades to manage No facilities to lease No capital costs of any kind — and no hidden costs. Just a metered, per-use rate or a fixed subscription fee. Use only what you want, pay only for what you use. Supply – Technology companies and one large book shop Large-scale Internet service providers built out their infrastructure. Architecture emerged: massively scaled, horizontally distributed system resources, abstracted as virtual IT services and managed as continuously configured, pooled resources.

Service Models IaaS PaaSSaaS

The cloud market 2013: 40% Of CRM Systems Sold Are SaaS-Based. Cloud growth is 5X that of the IT industry overall. Global cloud computing services revenue is expected to hit $148.8 billion come 2014 Public IT cloud services spending will reach $98 billion in 2016 early-stage companies (less than five years in business) are the most eager buyers of cloud and plan to increase their spend on public cloud by 24% over the next few years.

Windows Azure in the cloud market Visionary in the market of Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (Gartner, August 2013) Leader in the Enterprise Application Platform as a Service market (Gartner, January 2014) Averaging 8,000 new customers a week Windows Azure uses more server compute than the entire planet used in 2000 More information is stored in Windows Azure than has been printed in history Commercial cloud services revenue more than doubled. Azure customers both grew triple-digits. (2014 Q2 report)

Hybrid - The Power of ‘And’ Customers don’t want to rip and replace their current infrastructure to benefit from the cloud; they want the strengths of their on-premises investments and the flexibility of the cloud The cloud should be an enabler for innovation, and an extension of your organization’s IT fabric by 2020, about 80% of the world’s 2,000 largest companies will still have greater than 50% of their IT onsite.

Windows Azure

DEMO

Azure Storage Scalable, durable, and available Anywhere at anytime access Only pay for what the service uses Use from Windows Azure Compute Use from anywhere on the internet Support Geo-Replication

Blob Storage Concepts BlobContainerAccount / hyntstorageaccount HYNT2012.bak HYNT2014.bak backups datafiles

Azure Storage DEMO

SQL 2014 and Azure

Deploy DB to Windows Azure VM A new wizard in the SSMS

Azure Virtual machines Choose the right size for you, you can scale at any time. Choose a location. Choose an image or create one of your own. Attach storage disks (blobs). Open ports using Endpoints.

Deploy DB to Windows Azure VM Nothing new technology-wise, it’s just a new wizard.

Deploy DB to Windows Azure VM DEMO

Basic VM management DEMO

Hybrid DB Data files in the cloud

Hybrid DB New in SQL Server you can put any data file in the cloud. Create Credentials to allow access of the windows service to the storage account\container. Create you data files directly on a URL, no changes or additions to the T-SQL syntax.

Hybrid DB - Advantages Almost Bottomless storage with very low cost. Data redundancy is included for free. No storage maintenance overhead. Separate compute and storage.

Hybrid DB – concerns Yes, I know, performance is an issue: Choose wisely what data to place in the cloud: DB that is not IO intensive. Better to place files that has more reads than writes. When the server (compute) is on Azure VM, performance is good. Security might be a concern: Use TDE Choose the right geo location.

Hybrid DB – use cases Simple DR solution for cases that the server hardware or software is failing (no data loss) Migration between servers in different locations Large DWH with ColumnStore indexes - read once from cloud, and keep in server memory. If data loss is possible, use in combination with delayed durability (new in SQL Server 2014) Large read-only Filegroups

Hybrid DB DEMO

Backup to Azure storage

Also known as backup to URL Exists since SQL Server 2012 SP1 CU2 (build ) but only through T-SQL, SMO and PowerShell. New in SQL Server 2014 – support in the Backup and Restore wizard and maintenance plan. Flexible, reliable (3- copies, geo-DR), limitless off-site storage.

Backup to Azure storage - Advantages Reduced cost for storage that is usually not used. No Media and hardware management. Can be used as a Backup Archive by offering a better alternative to the often used tape option to archive backups (backup to tape is deprecated) Near bottomless. Off-site storage for backups. Built-in Geo redundancy. Remote accessibility. For the security lovers: Backup now supports Encryption.

Backup to Azure storage DEMO

Microsoft® SQL Server® Backup to Microsoft Windows® Azure®Tool Allows backup of DBs from other SQL version to Azure ( ) Supports DB encryption and compression as well Free! Runs as a windows service with a specific hard-coded account name

Microsoft® SQL Server® Backup to Microsoft Windows® Azure®Tool DEMO

DR in the cloud

DRP is a must for mission critical applications and databases. DR cost a lot of money to create and maintain. Creating a DR in the cloud can save most of the cost of initial building the environment. The maintenance is easier, and cost a lot less. You can choose your geo location. Use the DR site to off-load some of your workload from the main site.

Always-on Availability group replica in Azure VM Not new in SQL Server 2014, but complicated to implement till now. In 2014 – a new Wizard that allows us to save time on configuration. Still requires some infrastructure work and configurations: VPN from ON-premise domain to the Azure virtual network.

Always-ON Availability group Replica on Azure wizard NO DEMO 

Questions?

Thank you.