Lesson Learned #430: Addressing Error 3201 with Azure Blob Storage: "Operating system error 86"
Today, I worked on a service request that our customer got the following error message:Cannot open backup device 'https://XXX.blob.core.windows.net/NNN/YYY.bak'. Operating system error 86(The specified network password is not correct.).RESTORE HEADERONLY is terminating abnormally. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 3201). Following I would like to share with you some details why this issue and the activities done to resolve it.Simplified & lower pricing for Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance backup storage
Today as you deploy your Azure SQL database or Azure SQL managed instance, one of the important decisions to be made is the choice for your backup storage redundancy (BSR). I say it's important because the availability of your database depends on the availability of your backups. Here’s why. Consider the scenario where your DB has high availability configured via zone redundancy. And, let's say, your backups are configured non-zone redundant. In the event of a failure in the zone, your database fails over to another zone within the region, however your backups won't, because of their storage setting. Now, in the new zone, the backup service attempts to backup your database but cannot reach the backups in the zone where the failure happened causing the logs to become full and eventually impacting the availability of the database itself. As you create the Azure SQL database,the choices for backup storage redundancy are: Locally Redundant Storage (LRS) Zone Redundant Storage (ZRS) Geo Redundant Storage (GRS) and Geo Zone Redundant Storage (GZRS) Each of these storage types provides different levels of durability, resiliency and availability for your databases and database backups. Not surprisingly, each storage type also has different levels of pricing, and the price increases significantly as the protection level increases with GZRS storage type almost 4-5x LRS. Choosing between resilience and cost optimization is an extremely difficult choice that the DB owner must make. We are thrilled to announce that, starting from 11/01/2024, the backup storage pricing is now streamlined and simplified across Azure SQL database and Azure SQL Managed Instance. Bonus – we even reduced the prices 😊 The price changes apply to the Backup Storage Redundancy configuration for both Point-in-time and Long-Term Retention backups, across the following tiers of Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance: Product Service Tier Azure SQL Database General Purpose Business Critical Hyperscale Azure SQL Managed Instance General Purpose Business Critical Next Generation General Purpose (preview) As we made the changes, following were the principles we adhered to: No price increase BSR pricing for ZRS is reduced to match the BSR pricing for LRS BSR pricing for GZRS is reduced to match the BSR pricing of GRS BSR pricing for GRS/GZRS will be 2x that of LRS/ZRS Type of backups What is Changing PITR BSR pricing for ZRS is reduced by 20% to match pricing for LRS for all service tiers in Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance except for Azure SQL Database Hyperscale service tier. BSR pricing for GZRS is reduced by 41% to match pricing for GRS for all service tiers in Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance. LTR BSR pricing for ZRS is reduced by 20% to match pricing for LRS for all service tiers in Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance. BSR pricing for GZRS is reduced by 41% to match pricing for GRS for all service tiers in Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance. As an example, lets take East US as the region and look at the pricing for backup storage redundancy for Point in Time storage before and after the changes: For General Purpose/Business Critical service tiers the pricing would now be: Backup Storage Redundancy Current price New Price Price change LRS $0.10 $0.10 None ZRS $0.125 $0.10 20% less GRS $0.20 $0.20 None GZRS $0.34 $0.20 41% less For Hyperscale service tier, the new pricing would now be: Backup Storage Redundancy Current price New Price Price change LRS $0.08 $0.08 None ZRS $0.1 $0.10 None GRS $0.20 $0.20 None GZRS $0.34 $0.20 41% less Similarly, Backup storage redundancy prices for Long Term Retention backups in East US would be as follows: Backup Storage Redundancy Current price New Price Price change LRS $0.025 $0.025 None ZRS $0.0313 $0.025 20% less GRS $0.05 $0.05 None GZRS $0.0845 $0.05 41% less As a customer, the decision now becomes much easier for you. If you need regional resiliency: choose Zone Redundant Storage (ZRS) If you need regional and/or geo resiliency: choose Geo Zone Redundant Storage (GZRS). If the Azure region does not support AvailabilityZones, then choose Local Redundant Storage for regional resiliency, and Geo Redundant Storage for geo resiliency respectively. Please Note: The Azure pricing page and Azure pricing calculator will be updated with these new prices soon. The actual pricing meters have already been updated. Additionally, the LTR pricing change for Hyperscale will be in effect from January 1, 2025.Azure SQL Managed Instance Updates – #MSIgnite 2024
This Ignite, Azure SQL Managed Instance updates are bringing more flexibility, TCO improvements and new functionalities! GA of Instance Pools Instance Pools are Generally Available! Use instance pools to create cost effective 2 vCore instances. This presents an attractive option for running small SQL Server workloads in a managed service while keeping costs comparable to (or even below) the costs of running SQL Server on Azure VMs. In addition, you can leverage fast instance creation within the pool as well as the ability to move instances in and out of the pool when needed. For more details, see Instance Pools announcement blog post. Fabric Mirroring Preview Fabric Mirroring for Azure SQL Managed Instance enables you to seamlessly replicate your operational data into Fabric OneLake and leverage the power of Microsoft Fabric for analytics, reporting, AI and more without having to set up ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) pipelines. Data is continuously replicated in near-real time into open delta format, and available to all Fabric workloads. That means your mirrored data can be analyzed with Data Warehouse in familiar T-SQL manner, and with other Fabric capabilities as well. To learn more about Fabric Mirroring available in preview for SQL MIs with update policy “always-up-to-date” see announcement blog post. Free SQL MI for everyone (almost) With free offer you can test your SQL workloads in the cloud using Azure SQL Managed Instance for free. This refresh brings support for many subscription types such as: Enterprise Agreement Support, Azure Plan, various Visual Studio and Dev/Test subscriptions, and more. You can now also convert your Managed Instance from free to paid production in two clicks and get the 99.99% uptime SLA as well as a myriad of configuration options. More details on free SQL MI in the latest blog post. Earlier this year… Vector and JSON support in preview Vector support is invaluable for building AI powered applications and experiences on top of your own operational data. With the addition of native vector support it is now even easier to modernize existing applications, by adding AI capabilities that take advantage of the precious data stored in Azure SQL, either via using the new VECTOR_DISTANCE function directly, or using libraries like LangChain, Semantic Kernel and similar.Join the preview of Vector support for Azure SQL Managed Instance. Native JSON support is another new programmability feature available in preview for Azure SQL Managed Instance. With this, processing JSON data just got more performant. All existing JSON functions support new JSON data type seamlessly, and the update is bringing some new functions as well. More about this update in the SQL MI JSON blog post. Both Vector and JSON support previews are available for Azure SQL Managed Instance with Update Policy “Always-up-to-date”. Update Policy is and will be a prerequisite for a lot of future SQL innovation. On the other hand, security updates, patches and platform updates such as Instance Pools, Free SQL MI offer or Next-gen General Purpose are applicable to all instances, regardless of their Update Policy. GA of Disaster Recovery with MI link Disaster recovery capabilities with MI link for SQL Server 2022 are GA! Empower your on-premises SQL Server deployments with Azure and leverage hybrid DR capabilities to improve your resilience. To see MI link DR in action,see demos we’ve prepared for you. Next-Gen General Purpose service tier Next-gen General Purpose service tier brings better performance and up to 500 user databases for the same price. It enables much more flexibility, allowing you to purchase additional IOPS, without increasing reserved storage. You can also scale instances with fine-grained vCore adjustments, such as moving from 4 to 6 vCores or from 8 to 10 vCores. Moreover, instance storage limit is doubled to 32TB, and there is more! To learn about all the benefits Next-gen General Purpose is bringing, see the latest blog post and documentation. Simplified and lower backup prices Backup prices are now lowered and simplified for both Point-in-time restore and Long-term Retention backups across all service tiers in Azure SQL Managed Instance and Azure SQL Database. Prices have been reduced for ZRS and GZRS Backup Storage Redundancy options to match with LRS and GRS respectively. Learn more about simplified and lowered backup pricing here. Learn more Subscribe to SQL MI LinkedIn Newsletter today! Try Azure SQL Managed Instance for free. What's new in Azure SQL Managed Instance? Announcing Microsoft SQL Server 2025. Announcing SQL database in Microsoft Fabric public preview. Read the 2024 recap of all the Azure SQL and SQL Server news this year by Anna Hoffman. Try new SSMS 21 Preview with Copilot with your Azure SQL Managed Instance.Azure SQL Managed Instance pools: General Availability
We are happy to announce new features and General Availability for instance pools. Instance pools are a deployment option in Azure SQL Managed instance service to provision small, cost-effective 2-vCore instances. This way, small instances can cost 50% less compared to non-pooled instances, making it an attractive PaaS target when migrating small on-premises servers or modernizing SQL VMs.
