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.
Related
I have a windows VPS, not on azure. I'm looking into the Azure backup services.
Ideally I'd like to backup the whole VPS to azure. Lets say MY current VPS dies, then I can just use the Azure backup to create a new VPS, with all programs, settings, files, databases everything.
I'm not sure which of the azure options to pick for this:
Does anyone know any good resources or what each of the options mean, or have any suggestions? I've read lots on the Azure website but it's not particularly clear.
Apologies if this is basic stuff or I've missed an obvious resource, I'm new to servers.
Many thanks,
Phil.
If you want to have a full backup of your machine choosing 'files and folders' and 'system state' is your best option:
Files and folders will allow you to recover individual files and folders on your machine. Imagine a user accidentally deletes a file, you can recover it from the backup.
System State will allow you to recover your system state (configuration of your machine) if your machine would be corrupted.
The other items in there will allow you to recover from specific sources (Hyper-V or VMware) or to take application consistent back-ups.
To recover a full machine, I would enable files/folders and system state backup. With Azure Backup you can restore either on Azure (on a VM on Azure) or on the source server.
Make sure to also have a look at Azure Site Recovery. With Azure Site Recovery, you can 'mirror' a machine towards Azure. This will allow you to very quickly restore a machine in case of corruption on Azure. If your source is a VPS, you would only be able to restore to Azure with site recovery, not go back to the VPS.
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.
See a similar question here
I would like to have some help regarding this.. What I want to achieve is for my PostgreSQL installed on my docker-container in a VM to be backed-up every hour and that backup will be deleted for 2 hours.
I read about the microsoft blobs, and I think that's what I'm looking for but the question for now is.. How to transfer the backup of Postgresql database to the microsoft blob.. Is there a shell command for that?
I find this PostgreSQL-Backup tool provides a way to backup PostgreSQL, and it seems support backup PostgreSQL to Azure Storage, but this feature is not free.
Besides, even if you backup PostgreSQL to Azure Blob, currently Azure Blob storage does not provide auto-delete feature. You could try to mount the file share and use the basic feature (not be charged) that PostgreSQL-Backup tool provides to backup PostgreSQL to that file share, and then you could run a WebJob to detect backup files and dynamically&programmatically delete backup files.
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.