One of the benefits which comes with a Managed Instance is having backups taken care of for you. That also includes restores. Particularly useful is a one-click (ish) restore for a specific point in time. Restoring a database is as easy as creating a new database, as its part of the same workflow. From the […]
Its the time of year where things may winding down for the new year and we can get a bit of breathing room. With that free time you might want to try something new, let’s say some SQL Server in the cloud? It could be a good time to start brushing up on new skills, […]
Connecting different versions of SQL Server can allow us to combine or transfer data between environments. This can become a challenge when the versions are really different. Have you tried to connect SQL Server 2008 to a SQL database in Azure? – it can throw up a few curve balls. In this post we’ll look at how […]
We may associate consuming data from Azure Storage with tools like Data Factory or even SSIS as we saw recently. We don’t always need the middle man though. Here we’ll demonstrate how to use an External Data Source to perform the ingestion directly into SQL Server. Firstly we need the credential to authenticate against the storage. […]
Last week we looked at using the Azure Feature Pack for SSIS to interface with Azure Storage. Today we’re going to solve a couple of the common issues I’ve seen when using this pack. Bad or timed out requests You can set up a connection to the storage and it tests fine, but when you come to […]
Migrating to the cloud can be disruptive to existing processes. Moving storage to Azure isn’t a simple configuration change for SSIS packages. SSIS doesn’t have native connections for Azure. That doesn’t mean we need to completely re-engineer the process or change technology though. How can we take the simple package below and move to using […]
A hierarchy of directories which contain files. That’s how we typically think about file storage. That’s not quite the same everywhere. In Blob Storage a file can appear to be in a directory, but when it’s removed so is the directory. This can occur when using Lifecycle Management to help purge legacy blobs, which can […]
A consumption based App Service Plan in Azure provides us with a pay-as-you-go model for Function usage. This can help reduce spend from Premium plans where those plans exceed the requirements of the function, for example low volume or intermittent work. Unfortunately you can’t move a Premium plan to Consumption based via the portal. Instead […]
In a Managed Instance, the SQL Agent job history is fixed at 1000 records or 100 records per job. This isn’t configurable like a regular SQL Server install. So how can we maintain a history of these if we want to retain those records? There are 3 approaches which could be worth considering. Two of […]
Andy Brownsword 