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Running SQL Server in the Cloud: 2017 Edition

Last Updated April 10, 2022

You have two basic options: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is just VMs running in someone else’s data center – be it Amazon, Google, or Microsoft. Job duties for a DBA are the same as on-premises virtual machines: you manage HA, DR, patching, backups, and performance tuning. It’s just that you may have slightly different…

So You Want a Cheap Disaster Plan

Last Updated November 22, 2017

Tara Kizer

Cloud Computing, Log Shipping

There’s a lot that goes into a Disaster Recovery plan. One of them is offsite backups. There are some businesses that don’t have backups going offsite, let alone a Disaster Recovery plan. This conversation has taken place more than I thought it would. Me: Do you have any HA or DR features in place? Them:…

#PASSsummit Day 2 Keynote: Dr. Rimma Nehme on Azure Cosmos DB

Last Updated November 2, 2017

Brent Ozar

#SQLPass, Microsoft Azure

Dr. Rimma Nehme Summit day 2 keynotes have become special. Over the last few years, Microsoft has dedicated the day 2 keynote to a technical dive into an advanced, future-looking topic. Past examples have included future-looking guidance on Hekaton, columnstore indexes, and how Azure SQL DB protects data. I love Microsoft for doing this. It costs…

An Expensive Reason To Avoid AGs In Azure

Last Updated August 27, 2017

Erik Darling

Always On Availability Groups, Backup and Recovery, CHECKDB and Corruption, Cloud Computing, High Availability, Microsoft Azure, SQL Server

Cash Rules Most people, when they get through paying for Azure, and SQL Server Enterprise Licensing, are left with a hole in their wallet that could only be filled with something that says “Bugatti”, and has a speedometer with an infinity sign at the end. Recently, while working with a client, I found out that…

sp_BlitzCache: Eventual Compatibility With Azure

Last Updated November 16, 2017

Erik Darling

Execution Plans, Microsoft Azure, sp_BlitzCache

Better than nothing Yesterday it was announced that global temp tables were available in public preview for Azure. That means that unmodified versions of sp_BlitzCache (which uses a global temp table to hold a whole bunch of information) will be compatible up there. This is a nice addition for Azure, and an even nicer addition…

Builder Day: Cloudbuilding Episode 1 – The Road to HANA

Last Updated June 23, 2017

Erik Darling

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cloud Computing

Staving off obsoletion Brent has recently set aside “free” time to learn about stuff up in the cloud. I only put free in quotes because we do have to do something with a cloud theme, but we can pick whatever we want. Naturally, I chose the hardest thing with the least practical use. I chose…

Builder Day: Doing a Point-in-Time Restore in Amazon RDS for SQL Server

Last Updated June 13, 2017

Tara Kizer

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Backup and Recovery

Brent had an idea that we should set aside a day per month where we could build things in the cloud and blog about our experiences. I was tasked with Amazon RDS for SQL Server: create an instance, configure backups and test point-in-time restores. After grabbing some coffee, I logged into the AWS console. We…

Builder Day: Doing a Point-in-Time Restore in Azure SQL DB

Last Updated June 20, 2017

Brent Ozar

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Backup and Recovery

We’re trying something new at the company: Builder Day. We define a slightly-out-of-the-norm task, and then the team splits up and tackles the task on different cloud platforms, writing it up as we go. These posts aren’t going to make you an expert on the topic – they’re just meant to let you skim through…

Building a Faux PaaS, Part 3: What the Ideal Engineering Team Looks Like

Last Updated June 8, 2017

Brent Ozar

Architecture, kCura Relativity, Microsoft Azure

Background: I’m working with kCura to build a Faux PaaS: something akin to Microsoft’s Azure SQL DB, but internally managed. You can catch up with what we’ve discussed so far in Part 1 and Part 2 of the series. In the last post, I talked about measuring backup and restore throughputs across different instance types, regions, storage configs, and backup locations.…

#DevIntersection Keynote Notes: Jeffrey Snover on Azure Stack

Last Updated May 22, 2017

Brent Ozar

Microsoft Azure

Preface: data professionals, if you’re in a hurry, skip this post. Nothing in here is directly relevant to your career in the next couple of years. I found it interesting because it explains where Microsoft’s developer story is going, though. At DevIntersection/SQLIntersection today, Microsoft’s Jeffrey Snover (@jsnover) talked about Azure Stack, something data professionals haven’t…

Building a Faux PaaS, Part 2: Choosing and Testing a Cloud Vendor

Last Updated June 8, 2017

Brent Ozar

Cloud Computing, Microsoft Azure

Background: I’m working with kCura to build a Faux PaaS: something akin to Microsoft’s Azure SQL DB, but internally managed. In Part 1 of this series, I talked about why we’re building it, and today, I’ll talk about where. The database team rarely gets to pick the cloud vendor. The choice between Amazon, Google, and Microsoft is…

Confession: I recommended that a 5GB database get split up.

Last Updated April 5, 2017

Brent Ozar

Licensing, Microsoft Azure, SQL Server

Listen, I can explain. Really. Photo by Toa Heftiba We had a client with a 5GB database, and they wanted it to be highly available. The data powered their web site, and that site needed to be up and running in short order even if they lost the server – or an entire data center –…

New White Paper: How to Build a SQL Server Disaster Recovery Plan with Google Compute Engine

Last Updated March 17, 2017

Tara Kizer

Google Compute Engine, High Availability, Log Shipping, Processes and Practices

You’re a systems administrator or database administrator who wants to protect your production SQL Server. However, you don’t have a separate data center or another colo site. Learn about what we call Log Shipping 2.0 You’re looking for instructions on: How to copy your SQL Server databases to Google Cloud Storage How to spin up…

Announcing Google Managed PostgreSQL (and why SQL Server DBAs should care)

Last Updated March 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

Google Compute Engine

You’ll notice that we’ve been blogging and writing a lot about Google here this week. I gotta tell you – it’s totally bizarre sitting in a Google Cloud Next conference session in San Francisco, watching presenters using Macs, coding with Visual Studio Code, demonstrating SQL Server. I even talked to a SQL Server DBA attendee yesterday…

New White Paper: SQL Server Performance Tuning in Google Compute Engine

Last Updated March 17, 2017

Erik Darling

Google Compute Engine, Hardware, Wait Stats

You’re a database administrator, Windows admin, or developer. You might even be a marmot. You’re building your first SQL Servers in Google Compute Engine, and you’re stuck at the create instance screen. How many CPUs should you use? How much memory? How are you supposed to configure storage? Will it be fast enough, and what…

New White Paper: How to Build an Always On Availability Group in Google Compute Engine

Last Updated March 17, 2017

Brent Ozar

Always On Availability Groups, Google Compute Engine, SQL Server

You’re a database administrator, Windows admin, or developer. You want to build a Microsoft SQL Server environment that’s highly available, and you’ve chosen to use Always On Availability Groups. Our newest white paper – download In this white paper we built with Google, we’ll show you: How to build your first Availability Group in Google…

Always On Availability Groups Now Supported in Google Compute Engine

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

Always On Availability Groups, Cloud Computing, Google Compute Engine

I’m excited to finally be able to talk about something Erik, Tara, and I have been working on for the last few months. Here in the SQL Server community, when I mention cloud, you probably think of two companies: Microsoft and Amazon. We’ve been blogging about SQL in AWS for years, and Microsoft throws a…

7 Things I Learned About Aurora at AWS re:Invent 2016

Last Updated February 9, 2017

Brent Ozar

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Richie and I attended the AWS re:Invent conference in Vegas last week. Here’s some of my favorite takeaways about Amazon Aurora, their homegrown relational database with MySQL compatibility. 1. AWS has a grudge against Larry Ellison. Andy Jassy’s keynotes made repeated jokes about Oracle’s cloud product (or lack thereof), the high cost of proprietary databases,…

Migrating from SQL Server to MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Aurora

Last Updated November 11, 2016

Brent Ozar

Cloud Computing, SQL Server

I’m getting an increasing number of requests these days that say: “We’re considering migrating our application from SQL Server to a cheaper, easier-to-scale database. Can you help?” Well, kinda: why are you doing it? If you’re doing it to get easier scalability, we start by taking a step back and looking at the performance problems…

Lessons Learned From Working in the Clouds

Last Updated October 29, 2016

Richie Rump

Architecture, Cloud Computing, PasteThePlan.com

Recently, we released PasteThePlan.com, which runs on top of Amazon Web Services. PasteThePlan.com allows you to share SQL Server query plans with others. Behind the scenes, we’re using DynamoDB (a NoSQL database) for record data and S3 (a file storage service) to store text data. Since we’re a bunch of data freaks, we wanted to make sure…

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