I provisioned an Azure VM with SQL Server pre-installed on Azure, but the decision has been made to re-install SQL Server with a different license. According to Azure documentation that means that I need to "deploy a new virtual machine and migrate the data and applications to the new virtual machine". Can I back up the OS VHD and migrate that to a new Azure VM without losing the applications and other prep work that's already been done and as a result drop the extra costs associated with using a SQL Server VM? How would I go about doing that?
As far as I know, unfortunately not.
You need to backup your data, move it off the VM (say to blob storage using AzCopy), build a new VM choosing the right license/sku from the store, then restore your backup and redeploy your apps.
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I'm having windows azure. I've two virtual machine setup in azure and both virtual machine has sites. I've database on azure sql server . I just want to move azure sql server database to virtual machine's sql server.
How can I move database from azure sql server to virtual machine?
Follow this link, this will describe step by step process
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlazure/archive/2010/05/17/10014014.aspx
You can also export you Azure SQL Database as BACPACK file, move it to your VM and import BACKPACK into on-prem database. This process is easier and has less than exporting via Data Export.
Here is an article how to export/import BACKPACK files: http://fabriccontroller.net/blog/posts/backup-and-restore-your-sql-azure-database-using-powershell/
Not much of GUI explained there, but the first 2 scereenshots show you how to get to exporting and importing menus.
I recommend to practice on non-production DBs first, before you go ahead with your critical data.
Is it possible to create a Azure VM (medium or large) running an instance of SQL Server. This machine would contain various databases (one of each client). These databases would then need to be accessible from different Azure VM's which would be hosting either a single website per vm or multiple website per vm each requiring to access different databases.
If it is possible:
How do the other Azure VMs connect to the relevant VM that's running SQL server and connect to a specific database?
What cost implication are there? We store a lot of data including documents as blobs.
Our software supports both storing the documents as blobs or as actual files. Should we consider storing the files directly onto the hard drive instead of storing them in the database? Would this improve performances when running on Azure VM and/or reduce cost?
What's the recommended solution for backup? I assume that Azure VM can go down, though less likely, just like any other machines. What the recommended solution to restore a back?
Same for SQL Server. What is the recommended solution to backup database. Since we'd be running a full version of SQL on a Azure VM, is the best solution to have a separate storage drive and backup databases on this?
Thanks.
1-)You can create a Virtual Network and after that, create your VM's and set them to use this virtual network. Doing that, your vm's would call the vm with your sql server.
2-) You'll be billed for network, storage and vm compute (including vm size). The best you can do is create a vm and test for a little (with this settings). So you'll know how much your are spending.
3-) When you create a vm, the vhd is stored in a storage account. There's a backup for that, but you can download the vhd and make a version of that on premises.
4-) My suggestion, attach a extra disk to your VM and use it to SQL Server Backup.
I have a workgroup server on Windows Azure. I have used Rackspace before and simply image the server to back it up BUT thats not so easy on Azure as imaging the server deletes it!
My Azure server is used to run an application that uses an SQL Database. I backup the DB off site BUT need ensure I have a strategy for downtime of the server. I have looked into roles and instances but am fuzzy on it and getting lost in the many articles. See below what I have so far BUT I don't want the cost of two servers running for one application so **DOES ANYONE KNOW HOW TO ENSURE AVAILABILITY OF AN AZURE SERVER AND BACKUP THE CONTENTS IN THE EVENT OF A CRASH WITHOUT ftping EVERYTHING OFF SITE?
Azure is georedundant BUT you have to set up your server to avail of this feature
Current Azure setup is that we set up Workgroup servers and license them BUT I am fuzzy on where to go from here.
This is where it gets tricky
The number of per-role instances in a Windows Azure application is controlled by the Instances setting in the configuration (cscfg) file.
Windows Azure Service Configuration Schema http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee758710.aspx
How to Configure the Roles for a Windows Azure Application with Visual Studio http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/hh369931.aspx
Change the Number of Instances
To improve the performance of your application, you can change the number of instances of a role that are running, based on the number of users or the load expected for a particular role. A separate virtual machine is created for each instance of a role when the application runs in Windows Azure. This will affect the billing for the deployment of this application. For more information about billing, see Windows Azure Billing Basics.
• I will continue to research but if any of you know the answer (how can I easily backup my Azure server docs and data without ftping offsite) please feel free to weigh in!
If all you want is to back up the server, then you could use Recovery Services Vaults. This feature allows you to backup any Azure VM. The backup is a snapshot of the entire server.
You can test your contingency plan by restoring the backup to a new VM.
It depends on what you are trying to backup and scale. A proper cloud architecture should not store or persist data on local Azure servers, since that does not scale. You should be persisiting data to azure table storage, blob storage, SQL db and backup the data from there. Then you can use the APIs to backup anything from a central location.
if you are running something like SQL Server or SharePoint then there are some files peristed on the local VMs that you will need to backup. Luckily, those vhd drives are stored on BLOB storage and can be backed up as well in addition to geo redundant backup.
I would like to migrate our test server - a Windows Azure VM running Windows 2008 server (running AD DC and variety of apps such as Dynamics CRM) - to a virtual network.
I am looking for a safe way to migrate the server to the virtual network.
My research to date indicates that I can create a new VM using the same OS disk. However when I attempt to create a new VM the existing OS disk is not visible in the list of images.
Is anybody able to point me in the right direction as to how this is achieved? Also, do you have any recommendations with respect to a rollback strategy (e.g. Backup tools)?
Alan.
I haven't verified the flow, but it should be working fine. Follow these steps:
Make sure you are not using static IP on your AD/DC. The IP Addresses in Azure shall always be DHCP allocated!
Shut down the AD/DC
Copy the VHD blob to a new blob! I strongly suggest that you have the OS Disk (VHD blob) in a storage account which is in the same affinity group as the Virtual Network. So, if the current OS Disk is not in a Storage Account, which is in the same affinity group as the VNet, create a new storage account and copy the original VHD there. Please note that you should copy the blob only when the VM is shut down!
Create the sub-net you want to bring the VM in. (probably you already have created it).
Create a new VM using the copied VHD as an OS Disk and selecting the Virtual Network and sub-net.
Possible gotchas with this migration:
IP Address of AD/DC will change when added to the Virtual Network. Be prepared and never assign static IP Address to a VM in Azure
You will not see the VHD in the list of possible images to use - in that case use some kind of storage explorer (such as Cloud Storage Studio) to make sure there is no existing lease on the blob with the VHD. If there is a lease - break it!
A suggested VNet setup for AD/DC/DNS infrastructure in azure is clearly described in this blog post
I want to move an existing server 2008 instance from Rackspace/Hostway to Azure. Can I do a full OS/data backup, copy the backup file to the Azure server, and then restore from the backup file? How do you suggest me migrating this server to Azure? Hostway will not let me get a copy of the VMDK file.
Have you tried contacting the support for providing you with either VMDK or a VHD file? Why are you so sure they won't give it to you?
If they don't you could do a full system backup with either Windows Backup or any imaging software. Get that backup locally. Restore the backup locally on a virtual Machine. Run sysprep on that local VM. Get the VHD, upload it to Azure and finally create a Windows Azure VM from that VHD.
You can provision a SQL VM in the azure cloud and then synch your database to it directly or copy the database files directly to it. This has a vast performance improvement as well over the SQL Azure service and for a large business app with a lot of DB access we found that this is almost a requirement than an option. (DB should be on your C drive so that it runs on the local disk.) SQL Azure is slow because of how data is replicated, a local VM running the service is highly advised. We have an 11GB DB and this was the only way to get some reasonable performance out of it.
See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2711868/azure-performance/13091125#13091125 for our benchmarks. I've done testing on SQL on VMS and it's on par with an on premises solution.