Introduction
The mailinglist of Luper’s learning featured the following article ;
“Introducing a simplified configuration experience for SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machines”
To me, this is a very cool and shows the innovation that’s going on in the whole Azure landscape. Underneath, any azure enthousiast, will see that this is powered by the ARM JSON templates. Though from a business perspective, the right questions are posed!
- Who should be able to access it and how?
- What are the storage capacity & performance expectations?
- What about (technical) maintenance aspects like backup & patching?
How to find the machine?
Go to the marketplace in the Azure portal and find the following SQL server ;
What will it bring to the table?
In addition to a plain SQL deployment, you are also able to configure ;
Storage Performance
Automated Backup
Automated Patching
Keyvault Integration
Despite what the referenced article suggests, you are able to secure your database in a private network ;
Any gotcha’s?
- Be aware that this is a “hit & run” type of deployment and not a full “as-a-service” offering. You will still be responsible for the maintenance and any type of management. This does not replace your system engineer / administrator / architect… They will still have a role, though the deployment will consume less time.
- The licensing is based on the “PAYG” (pay-as-you-go) model. So you cannot leverage your own (existing) licenses.
- At this point, the deployment does not have a “High Availability” option. Though you are able to configure an availability group. Though at this point I’m not sure how feasible it is to extend this deployment towards an AlwaysOn setup.
Karim Vaes 