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Prerequisites - SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc

  • Article

Applies to: SQL Server

An Azure Arc-enabled instance of SQL Server is an instance on-premises or in a cloud provider that is connected to Azure Arc. This article explains those prerequisites.

If your SQL Server VMs are on VMware clusters, review Support on VMware.

Before you deploy

Before you can Arc-enable an instance of SQL Server, you need to:

Installation account permissions

The user or service principal requires:

  • Read permission on the subscription
  • Local administrator permission on the operating system to install and configure the agent
    • For Linux, use the root account
    • For Windows, use an account that is a member of the Local Administrators group

Before enabling SQL Servers with Arc, the installation script checks:

  • The region where the Arc-enabled SQL Server is supported
  • Microsoft.AzureArcData resource provider is registered

These checks require read permission on the subscription for the user.

The user or service principal requires the following permissions in the Azure resource group to complete the task. Specifically:

  • Azure Connected Machine Onboarding role
  • Microsoft.AzureArcData/register/action
  • Microsoft.HybridCompute/machines/extensions/read
  • Microsoft.HybridCompute/machines/extensions/write
  • Microsoft.Resources/deployments/validate/action

Users can be assigned to built-in roles that have these permissions, for example:

For more information, see Assign Azure roles using the Azure portal.

Verify state of user databases

When a SQL Server instance is enabled by Azure Arc, the connection sets some database permissions so that you can manage databases from Azure. For details about the permissions set at a database level, review SQL permissions.

Only databases that are online and updateable are included.

Verify the state of any databases you plan to manage from Azure.

This query lists all databases, their status, and if they are updateable:

SELECT 
    name AS DatabaseName,
    CASE 
        WHEN state_desc = 'ONLINE' THEN 'Online'
        WHEN state_desc = 'OFFLINE' THEN 'Offline'
        ELSE 'Unknown'
    END AS Status,
    CASE 
        WHEN is_read_only = 0 THEN 'READ_WRITE'
        ELSE 'READ_ONLY'
    END AS UpdateableStatus
FROM sys.databases;

Run that query on any instance that you enable.

Service account permissions

The SQL Server service account must be a member of the sysadmin fixed server role on each SQL Server instance. By default, the SQL Server service account is a member of the sysadmin fixed server role.

For more information about this requirement, review SQL Server service account.

Set proxy exclusions

Note

The exclusion in this section is required for the March, 2024 release and before.

Beginning with the release in April, 2024 this exclusion is not required.

If a proxy server is used, set the NO_PROXY environment variable to exclude proxy traffic for:

  • localhost
  • 127.0.0.1

Connect to Azure Arc data processing service

Arc-enabled SQL Server requires outbound connection to Azure Arc Data Processing Service.

Each virtual or physical server needs to communicate with Azure. Specifically, they require connectivity to:

  • URL: *.<region>.arcdataservices.com
  • Port: 443
  • Direction: Outbound
  • Authentication provider: Microsoft Entra ID

To get the region segment of a regional endpoint, remove all spaces from the Azure region name. For example, East US 2 region, the region name is eastus2.

For example: *.<region>.arcdataservices.com should be *.eastus2.arcdataservices.com in the East US 2 region.

For a list of supported regions, review Supported Azure regions.

For a list of all regions, run this command:

az account list-locations -o table

Note

You can't use Azure Private Link connections to the Azure Arc data processing service. See Unsupported configurations.

Supported SQL Server versions and environments

Supported configurations

SQL Server version

SQL Server 2012 (11.x) and later versions.

Operating systems

  • Windows Server 2012 and later versions
  • Ubuntu 20.04 (x64)
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8 (x64)
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 15 (x64)

Important

Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 support ended on October 10, 2023. For more information, see SQL Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012/2012 R2 end of support.

.NET Framework

On Windows, .NET Framework 4.7.2 and later.

This requirement begins with extension version 1.1.2504.99 (November, 14 2023 release). Without this version, the extension might not function as intended. Windows Server 2012 R2 does not come with .NET Framework 4.7.2 by default and must be updated accordingly.

Support on VMware

You can deploy SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc in VMware VMs running:

  • On-premises
  • In VMware solutions, for example:

    • Azure VMware Solution (AVS)

      Warning

      If you're running SQL Server VMs in Azure VMware Solution (AVS) private cloud, follow the steps in Deploy Arc-enabled Azure VMware Solution to enable.

      This is the only deployment mechanism that provides you with a fully integrated experience with Arc capabilities within the AVS private cloud.

    • VMware Cloud on AWS

    • Google Cloud VMware Engine

Unsupported configurations

Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server doesn't currently support the following configurations:

  • SQL Server running in containers.
  • SQL Server editions: Business Intelligence.
  • Private Link connections to the Azure Arc data processing service at the <region>.arcdataservices.com endpoint used for inventory and usage upload.
  • SQL Server 2008 (10.0.x), SQL Server 2008 R2 (10.50.x), and older versions.
  • Installing the Arc agent and SQL Server extension can't be done as part of sysprep image creation.
  • Multiple instances of SQL Server installed on the same host operating system with the same instance name.
  • SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machines.
  • An Always On availability group where one or more replicas is on a failover cluster instance.

Register resource providers

To register the resource providers, use one of the following methods:

  1. Select Subscriptions.
  2. Choose your subscription.
  3. Under Settings, select Resource providers.
  4. Search for Microsoft.AzureArcData and Microsoft.HybridCompute and select Register.

Azure subscription and service limits

Before configuring your SQL Server instances and machines with Azure Arc, review the Azure Resource Manager subscription limits and resource group limits to plan for the number of machines to be connected.

Supported regions

Arc-enabled SQL Server is available in the following regions:

  • East US
  • East US 2
  • West US
  • West US 2
  • West US 3
  • Central US
  • North Central US
  • South Central US
  • West Central US
  • Canada Central
  • Canada East
  • UK South
  • UK West
  • France Central
  • West Europe
  • North Europe
  • Switzerland North
  • Central India
  • Brazil South
  • South Africa North
  • UAE North
  • Japan East
  • Korea Central
  • Southeast Asia
  • Australia East
  • Sweden Central
  • Norway East

Important

For successful onboarding and functioning, assign the same region to both Arc-enabled Server and Arc-enabled SQL Server.

Install Azure extension for SQL Server

The SQL Server 2022 (16.x) Setup Installation Wizard doesn't support installation of the Azure extension for SQL Server. There are two ways to install this component. Do one of the following:

For VMware clusters, review Support on VMware.

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