Data Archiving Strategies for SQL Server
As databases grow, keeping them performing well becomes increasingly more difficult. Often pruning data that is no longer required is a better strategy. This blog explores different techniques to remove or archive data at a high level. Some of the techniques depend on the version of SQL Server that you are running (box product, Azure SQL DB/HyperScale, or Azure SQL Managed Instance), but some techniques apply to all.
Automating the setup of Azure SQL Managed Instance Link
In this post we will be discussing how to automate the setup of the Managed Instance Link feature which enables near real-time data replication from SQL Server to Azure SQL Managed Instance. This feature is an extremely powerful migration tool for moving your databases from SQL Server running on-premises, in Azure VMs or on other cloud providers to Azure SQL Managed Instance and can also be used to provide a readable copy of your database(s) on Azure SQL Managed Instance for offloading specific real only workloads. The scripts we have created and referenced here in this post are a joint effort between the SQL CSE Engineering team and the Azure SQL Managed Instance team at Microsoft.Db2 to Azure SQL DB parallel data copy by generating ADF copy activities dynamically
Want to utilize near to full network bandwidth / CPU resources on source and target to perform efficient data copy from Db2 to Azure SQL? Follow this tech article to know more about how ADF can be utilized for this purpose.Azure SQL Managed Instance – Sync Agent Jobs and Logins in Failover Groups
In an Azure SQL Managed Instance setup with Failover Group, the schema, data, and database-level users will always be synced between primary and secondary instances. As of October 2021, there is no sync mechanism for SQL Server Agent Jobs or Server Logins/Roles because the functionality of replicating system databases does not exist. This document provides guidance and scripts to implement a workaround solution to have the Agent Jobs and Server Logins/Roles synced between primary and secondary instances.
SQL Server Replication as a tool to migrate very large databases
SQL Replication can be used as a viable tool for some migration scenarios, especially when there is a need to move transactions from the source database to the target continuously. SQL Replication is a perfect use case for specific migration scenarios involving Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Database Hyperscale as targets when the source database has the correct compatibility requirements for Transactional Replication.Database Migration / Reverse Migration between Azure SQL (DB/MI) and SQL Server using SmartBulkCopy
The purpose of this blog post is to accelerate and automate database migrations between different SQL Server Source and Target pairs that are out of scope for our 1st Party migration tooling such as DMA/DMS. Many times there is a need to migrate back to on-premises from Azure SQL (for compliance or regulatory reasons) and this blog can cover the option of accomplishing this using SmartBulkCopy for data movement.Monitoring CDC using Extended Events in SQL Server 2022
What do the new SQL 2022 CDC extended events track? CDC jobs include: Capture Job - Captures changes into capture table. Clean-up Job - Removes older data from capture table. Each event will cover the different CDC job activities. repl_logscan_session reports on capture job progress. cdc_cleanup_job_status reports on Clean-up job progressDatabase migrations to Azure SQL Managed Instance - Restore with Full and Differential backups
This blog will guide organizations to help accelerate migrations from on-premises, IaaS and/or relevant SQL Server implementation that need to be migrated to an Azure SQL Managed Instance, with little downtime, and having full and differential backups as the only options from source (e.g. no log backup capabilities).
