Book Image

Professional Azure SQL Managed Database Administration - Third Edition

By : Ahmad Osama, Shashikant Shakya
Book Image

Professional Azure SQL Managed Database Administration - Third Edition

By: Ahmad Osama, Shashikant Shakya

Overview of this book

Despite being the cloud version of SQL Server, Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance stands out in various aspects when it comes to management, maintenance, and administration. Updated with the latest Azure features, Professional Azure SQL Managed Database Administration continues to be a comprehensive guide for becoming proficient in data management. The book begins by introducing you to the Azure SQL managed databases (Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance), explaining their architecture, and how they differ from an on-premises SQL server. You will then learn how to perform common tasks, such as migrating, backing up, and restoring a SQL Server database to an Azure database. As you progress, you will study how you can save costs and manage and scale multiple SQL databases using elastic pools. You will also implement a disaster recovery solution using standard and active geo-replication. Finally, you will explore the monitoring and tuning of databases, the key features of databases, and the phenomenon of app modernization. By the end of this book, you will have mastered the key aspects of an Azure SQL database and Azure SQL managed instance, including migration, backup restorations, performance optimization, high availability, and disaster recovery.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
13
Index

Manual Backups for Azure SQL Database

Conventional database backup statements don't work in Azure SQL Database. A manual backup consists of exporting the database as a DACPAC (schema) or BACPAC (schema + data) and bcp (bulk copy program utility) out the data into CSV files.

Manual backups can be performed in the following ways:

  • Exporting a BACPAC to your Azure storage account using the Azure portal
  • Exporting a BACPAC to your Azure storage account using PowerShell
  • Exporting a BACPAC using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
  • Exporting a BACPAC or a DACPAC to an on-premises system using sqlpackage.exe

DACPAC and BACPAC

DACPAC stands for Data-Tier Application Package and contains the database schema in .xml format. A BACPAC is a DACPAC with data.

DAC is a database life cycle management tool that simplifies the development, deployment, and management of data tier elements supporting an application.

A BACPAC is generally used to move a database...