Azure Defender for SQL

Posted on by Mika Sutinen in Azure, Databases, SQL Server, SQL Server Administration, SQL Server DBA

It’s always a great time to write about security, so let’s go with this topic today. One of the main reasons I love public cloud is, that beyond nice offering for databases, they also provide great features around security.

One of these features, and the topic of this post, is Azure Defender for SQL. While Azure Defender has been around for a while, it was only very recently it was also made available for SQL Servers running on VMs.

So what is Azure Defender for SQL and why you should be enabling this today, if you already haven’t?

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Azure SQL Managed Instance Storage Performance

Posted on by Mika Sutinen in Azure, Databases, SQL Server, SQL Server Administration, SQL Server DBA
Spinning rust

Let’s continue with the storage performance topic a bit further. One thing that sometimes can be confusing is the storage performance with SQL Server Managed Instances. The reason for confusion comes from having two separate performance tiers (General Purpose and Business Critical), with different method of managing the IO performance.

In General Purpose the method to get better performance is to go with bigger files. In Business Critical the better performance comes with cost, by adding more vCores to your Managed Instance. There are also a couple other details to keep in mind, when figuring out what exactly you need for your workloads.

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The need for (storage) speed and the Cloud

Posted on by Mika Sutinen in Databases, Performance troubleshooting, SQL Server, SQL Server Administration, SQL Server DBA
Feel the need, the need for speed…

In a past couple months I’ve seen this happen in a couple of different customers, so I thought I’d write a short post about the topic. While it’s easy to think that running SQL Server workloads on cloud VM’s is the same as running them on VM’s in an on-premises environment, this is typically not the case. There is one huge difference to cloud based VMs.

The storage.

And as you are well aware, what databases commonly are used for, it’s storing data. But that data doesn’t exist in a limbo (though sometimes the cloud makes me wonder…) but in an actual storage device somewhere. In the on-premises world, if you’re running any type of serious workloads, that storage is going to be an expensive SAN device. In the cloud your storage is also very like coming from a super-expensive, state-of-the-art storage device, but that’s not the experience you’re going to get. Instead of having bandwidth measured in GB’s, you’re getting something that is measured in MB’s.

But why, you may ask? Read on.

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SQL Server Managed Instance and the most unhelpful error message during a database restore

Posted on by Mika Sutinen in Azure, Databases, SQL Server, SQL Server Administration, SQL Server DBA

I am a huge fan of managed database services, no matter which cloud platform they’re running on. The simple reason is that I am not a huge fan of managing the automation for the basic things like backups, patching and high availability myself anymore. There is a trade-off though when you’re using someone else’s automation to manage your environments, the price you pay is the limited visibility of what’s happening underneath the covers.

I was reminded about this the other day as I was attempting to restore a database from one Managed Instance to another, a pretty standard thing to do for certain, and was facing an issue with it. In the end the problem itself was easy to fix but difficult to figure out.

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Database restore performance oddities of SQL Server RDS

Posted on by Mika Sutinen in AWS, Databases, RDS, SQL Server DBA

One of the things I’ve learned over the years is, that sometimes the performance in cloud platforms can be unpredictable and you always need to expect the unexpected. Most of the times these issues are just minor annoyances, but they can certainly be confusing the first time you run into any of them.

A while back I had one of these experiences as I was working with moving databases from on premises datacenter to AWS using the native restore and backup capability in RDS. It’s a really nice feature giving you ability to easily move data in and out from the RDS, using familiar tools for DBAs. However this time I ran into a weirdest issue with the initial restore performance.

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Comparing SQL Server deployment options between Azure and AWS

Posted on by Mika Sutinen in AWS, Azure, RDS, SQL Server, SQL Server Administration, SQL Server DBA

Lately I’ve been spending lot of time outside my natural habitat, Azure, and I’ve entered the AWS frontier. Because of this I decided to write down some of my experiences about how the SQL Server deployments between these two cloud platforms compare to each other. AWS has been around longer than Azure by few years and is the largest of all the public cloud platforms, and I believe, that even today it’s hosting greater number of Windows based VMs than Azure.

With Azure Microsoft had the opposite approach to hosting SQL Server databases, and rather than starting with VMs they first released Azure SQL Database and then later on Microsoft added support for SQL Servers in VMs to attract more of the existing workloads into Azure. Noting the different approaches, let’s then take a look at how they compare when it comes to SQL Server deployments.

The competition of the cloudy giants
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Mysteriously exploding Failover Clusters and Azure Host Maintenance

Posted on by Mika Sutinen in Uncategorized
My clusters!! My clusters!!

Not too long ago in the past I had really interesting afternoon. It wasn’t interesting because I had 3 Failover Clusters that exploded, that’s just horrible, it was interesting because they exploded exactly 40 minutes apart. While I do believe in coincidences, that was just way too precise to be a random occurrence. After looking into it, and engaging once more Microsoft Premier Support, I was eventually able to find the reason.

It turns out that patching Azure Hosts where your VMs are running can cause some bloodcurdling things to happen.

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