Announcing the release of SQL Server Management Studio 21 Preview 1
The SQL Tools team, in partnership with Visual Studio team, is thrilled to announce the release of SQL Server Management Studio 21 Preview 1, which is based on Visual Studio 2022 (17.13.0 Preview 1). I often state, “It takes a village,” and SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 21 is no exception. We initiated work for this release after making SSMS 20.0 available in March. The teams committed significant time and energy to bring SSMS 21 Preview 1 to completion and land a November release. We have rebuilt SSMS from the ground up and are excited to bring it into a modern state and address many long-standing customer requests; we've linked the feedback items below for those interested. Download SSMS 21 Preview 1 What's new As a result of SSMS 21 becoming a Visual Studio-based solution, SSMS now supports 64-bit, is available via a modern installer, and offers automatic updates. You can read more about the mechanics of the Visual Studio installer in the documentation. Thanks to the Visual Studio team, we will offer two channels for SSMS 21: Preview and Release. The Preview channel is currently the only available channel. Once SSMS 21 is Generally Available (GA), it will be available through the Release channel, and we will use the Preview channel to share early builds of future releases for those of you who like to stay on the cutting edge. A review of therelease notesmay suggest there isn’t a whole lot that’s new in SSMS 21, which is misleading. Two features that users have been asking to see for a very long time are now available: Git integration and dark theme. Git integration has always been an integral part of Visual Studio, and we are happy to bring it back to SSMS users. As noted in last week’s post, having this integration in SSMS 21 lays the groundwork to bring SQL projects to SSMS. The SQL projects team is focused on the current preview of SDK-style projects, which is work that must be completed before they can evaluate what needs to be done for support in SSMS. In the SSMS Roadmap blog post from March, I stated that we committed to determining the engineering effort to implement dark theme. Once we had an estimate of what it would cost, it felt like we had two options: halt all work on SSMS to implement dark theme, or never implement dark theme. Multiple members of the community suggested that we implement dark theme over time, starting with the most-used dialogs and then systematically working through all the dialogs. We made the decision to take that approach, with dark theme available initially for Object Explorer, the Query Editor and Results pane, and Template Explorer. If you enjoy dark theme and want to provide input as to what dialogs we should theme next, please try out SSMS 21 via the Preview channel and comment on this feedback item with your input. While our primary goal for SSMS 21 is to achieve parity with SSMS 20 (but obviously on Visual Studio 2022, with a new installer, etc.), we have been able to make other improvements. Some of those are thanks to Visual Studio 2022, others are community requests: Always Encrypted Assessment Support for vertical tabsin the editor (on the top right of the editor window, you’ll see a small gear icon, which will bring up the placement options) Additional options for tabs and windows (available in Tools > Options > Environment > Tabs and Windows) such as colorizing documents by project or file type, setting the minimum and maximum tab width, and more The ability to customize the font and background color for cells in the results gride that contain NULL values Create logins and users for Azure SQL database in the UI New page in the database properties dialog for Database Scoped Configuration options Language support for Czech, Polish, and Turkish What's fixed We also implemented a few bug fixes in this release. Most notably, users of Registered Servers and Central Management Servers (CMS) can now save connection settings, such as Trust Server Certificate. We also addressed a couple issues around SSMS hanging when trying to connect to an Azure SQL Database, and you type in the incorrect database name in the database dropdown, or the user doesn’t have permissions to all the databases on the logical server, or the database has been deleted and you try to connect to it. What's missing There are a lot of changes in SSMS 21, but when you open it for the first time, it has the familiar look of the application you’ve been using for years. We do have a few known issues in this preview, documented separate from the release notes. It’s important to note that SSMS 21 Preview 1 does not have support for Analysis Services and Integration Services, and therefore also does not have support for Maintenance Plans. We are working with the respective teams to bring these features back to SSMS 21 in a later preview. You’ll also likely notice some strings that reference Visual Studio – we are working through that list and hope to have them updated in the next preview. What's next Whew. We’re not done! There are additional projects that are in progress and will be available in later previews: Support for roaming settings and consolidation of settings Improving the startup time for SSMS Improving the Azure authentication experience New connection experience Format JSON output in the results pane Resolve the issue with SSMS forgetting passwords We've also added our roadmap to the documentation, which will update with major releases. Copilot and Extensions Last week we also announced that Copilot in SSMS will be available in Private Preview, therefore it is not available in this public preview of SSMS 21. If you would like to participate in the private preview, you can indicate your interest here. Copilot in SSMS will be an opt-in experience, available as an extension. On the topic of extensions, any third-party extensions for SSMS will need to be updated to 64-bit to work with SSMS 21. This may not be a trivial process for some individuals and companies. We recognize that some users won’t even try out the SSMS 21 Preview 1 release until their favorite extension is available, and we understand. We ask you to be patient with the folks that own those third-party extensions, as we were not able to share a build in advance to give them a head start on updating their extension. With the SSMS 21 Preview 1 release you can expect the same experience for extensions that you see in SSMS 20. Long-term, we will bring full support for extensions to SSMS, including the ability to browse extensions from within SSMS, a presence in the Visual Studio marketplace, and support of the VSIXInstaller. Feedback If we missed anything in this post, please check out the FAQ page to see if it’s addressed there. If not, please leave a comment and we’ll follow up. We will continue to leverage the feedback site to track the improvements the community wants to see in SSMS. If you have any issues with the SSMS 21 Preview 1 release, please log them on the feedback site (and please search within the Tooling group first!). For any issues you log, please include detailed steps to recreate, and it would be helpful to include "SSMS 21 Preview 1" in the feedback title. We will have multiple preview releases, and we would like to use this feedback loop to incorporate feedback and quickly resolve issues. Those of you that have read all the way to end: Bravo! You're a true SSMS supporter and our team appreciates your continued use of the tool we’ve poured our hearts into this year. We hope you enjoy exploring all the new features in SSMS 21, and we look forward to bringing you more previews in the coming months.
SQL Server on Azure VMs: I/O analysis (preview)
Analyzing I/O problems just got easier for SQL Server on Azure VMs It is not easy to understand what's going on when you run into an I/O related performance problem on an Azure Virtual Machine. It is a common, but complex problem. What you need is to figure out what's happening at both the host level and your SQL Server instance where often, correlating host metrics with SQL Server workloads can be a challenge. We developed a new experience that helps you do exactly that.Enabling Azure Key Vault for SQL Server on Linux
Enhancing Security with EKM using Azure Key Vault in SQL Server on Linux: We’re excited to announce that Extensible Key Management (EKM) using Azure Key Vault in SQL Server on Linux is now generally available from SQL Server 2022 CU12 onwards, which allows you to manage encryption keys outside of SQL Server using Azure Key Vaults. In this blog post, we’ll explore how to leverage Azure Key Vault as an EKM provider for SQL Server on Linux. Azure Key Vault: The Bridge to Enhanced Security is a cloud-based service that securely stores keys, secrets, and certificates. By integrating Azure Key Vault with SQL Server, you can benefit from its scalability, high performance, and high availability. Refer Set up Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) Extensible Key Management with Azure Key Vault - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn for more details. Setting Up EKM with Azure Key Vault Here’s a streamlined version of the setup process for EKM with Azure Key Vault on SQL Server for Linux: Initialize a Microsoft Entra service principal. Establish an Azure Key Vault. Set up SQL Server for EKM and register the SQL Server Connector. Finalize SQL Server configuration. The full guide for setting up AKV with SQL Server on Linux is available here Set up Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) Extensible Key Management with Azure Key Vault - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn . For SQL on Linux, omit steps 3 and 4 and proceed directly to step 5. I’ve included screenshots below for your quick reference that covers the SQL Server configuration to use AKV. Run the below commands to enable EKM in SQL Server and register the SQL Server Connector as EKM provider. Please note: SQL Server requires manual rotation of the TDE certificate or asymmetric key, as it doesn’t rotate them automatically. Regular key rotation is essential for maintaining security and effective key management. Conclusion Using Azure Key Vault for EKM with SQL Server on Linux boosts security, streamlines key management, and supports compliance. With data protection being paramount, Azure Key Vault’s integration offers a robust solution. Stay tuned for more insights on SQL Server on Linux! :old_key:️:locked: Official Documentation: Extensible Key Management using Azure Key Vault - SQL Server Setup Steps for Extensible Key Management Using the Azure Key Vault Azure Key Vault Integration for SQL Server on Azure VMsHPE SGLX - The new Azure VM extension for SQL Server on Linux
Overview Mission critical SQL Server instances have the need to utilize high availability and disaster recovery features to ensure business continuity. SQL Server on Linux supports HPE Serviceguard as one of the supported clustering solutions.To know more, please refer to HPE Serviceguard for Linux. We have an official documentation that provides detailed steps on how you can configure SQL Server Always On availability groups with HPE Serviceguard for Linux. The purpose of this blog is to inform you about the HPE Serviceguard Extension available in Azure marketplace. This extension allows users to easily create Azure linux-based VMs with SQL Server and HPE Serviceguard pre-installed. As a result, customers can quickly configure SQL Server high availability (HA) solutions. The Serviceguard - Azure VM marketplace extension is available in all Azure regions for use. Let's get started! Create an Azure virtual machine using Azure portal: Log in to Azure portal – portal.azure.com Create Resource group in Azure under the subscription or choose existing resource group of choice. Choose SQL Server on Linux based marketplace image (RHELor SUSE) and configure the VM on the basis of disks, virtual network, etc. On the Advanced tab of VM creation, click on “Select an extension to install.” Search for HPE Serviceguard for Linux Click on load more and select the extension. Under ‘Select Serviceguard Add-on to install’ , Select Microsoft SQL server on Linux if it’s non-quorum server node machine and select ‘Centralized Serviceguard Management and Arbitration’ if you need Serviceguard quorum server and SGMGR+ (UI) to be configured,. Enter Serviceguard administrative user “sgmgr” password and confirm the same. Proceed to create the VM upon entering the SGLX extension details. After you have configured the other two VMs using the steps as outlined above, you can follow this documentation starting from "Create HPE Service guard cluster" section to configure SQL Server Always On availability groups for SQL Server on Linux
