SQL Migration - SQLPackage.exe takes so much time to export databases

[Mohamed Shehata]

Hello,

We are in process of migrating from SQL server 2088 R2 to Azure SQL. We are going to migrate around 144 databases, size ranges from 50 GB - 150 GB per DB.

We are using SQLPackage to export & import DBs into Azure SQL. For this, we are using a temp Azure VM to run this migration.

During our test, we noticed that exporting databases taking long time, around half an hour per DB. (I was using Standard L32s_v2 (32 vcpus, 256 GiB memory) VM, local NVM disks for data, log & temp to get higher throughput and IOPS).

Is there anyway that can speedup the export process (beside adding more VMs to run export/import in parallel)?

I know it is generic question, and each database is different from the other 🙂 , but any help would be appreciated.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

We ended up with using Standard L32s_v2 VM and running import/export process in parallel using different disks. (Disk for each component: data, log, export, import) and it was quick.