The demand for deploying agents in bulk on on-premise SQL servers is increasing, and manual deployment of the agent in bulk is a highly time-consuming task.
Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server extends Azure services to SQL Server instances hosted outside of Azure: in your data center, in edge site locations like retail stores, or any public cloud or hosting provider. It's worth noting that the SQL Server instance that you intend to enable with Azure Arc can be installed on a virtual or physical machine running either Windows or Linux.
To onboard a Azure Arc-enabled SQL server, If your SQL Server instance is not yet connected to Azure, you can initiate the connection process from the target machine by using the onboarding script. This script connects the server to Azure and installs the Azure extension specifically for SQL Server. Assuming that your server is already connected to Azure, you can proceed directly to the section titled "When the machine is already connected to an Arc-enabled Server."
You can refer to the table below to compare each method and decide which one suits your deployment needs best. For more in-depth information, click on the links to view the steps for each topic.
Method |
Description |
Interactively |
Manually connect the SQL Server instance on a single physical or virtual machine that is not currently connected to Azure Arc. Connect when machine not connected to Azure |
Interactively |
|
Interactively |
Manually connect the SQL Server on a single physical or virtual machine that is already connected to Azure Arc. Connect your SQL Server to Azure Arc on a server already connected to Azure Arc |
At scale |
|
At scale |
|
At scale |
|
At scale |
Connect SQL Server machines at scale with a Configuration Manager custom task sequence |
If you're planning to onboard hundreds of instances, it's recommended to scale the Arc extension installation either through Azure policy or with a PowerShell script remotely. However, using Azure policy would be a much easier approach for managing a large number of instances, compared to manually executing a PowerShell script. Using Azure Policy to install the SQL Server extension at scale on Arc-enabled SQL Server instances can be an efficient and effective solution, particularly for large environments with many servers to manage. When the policy is applied to a group of servers, it will automatically trigger the installation of the SQL Server extension on each server in the group. This can save a significant amount of time and effort compared to manually installing the extension on each server individually.
Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server architecture
In this particular blog post, I covered on how to simplify onboarding multiple SQL Servers to Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server at scale using Azure policy.
8. Review all the policy information and click Create.
11. Allow sometime to apply remediation and check status by clicking Refresh.
Summary:
In this blog post, I covered on how to simplify Onboarding multiple SQL Servers to Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server at scale using Azure policy. Azure Policy can certainly be an efficient way to install the SQL Server extension at scale on Arc-enabled SQL Server instances.
In case you're interested in learning more about deployment options for Azure Arc enabled SQL Server, you can refer to the following Microsoft Docs article. The Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server lab environment can be deployed either through the ARM template in Azure Portal or by cloning the Azure Arc Git repository at "https://github.com/microsoft/azure_arc.git".
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