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SQL Azure: Automated Database Export (Archived Post)- Please use automated-backup built-into Azure SQL Database

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Great news for SQL Azure, looks like the feedback’s been heard. In July’s scheduled updates we released some great updates to Windows Azure. One of the enhancements for SQL Azure include:

Support for Automated SQL Export and a New Premium Tier SQL Database option

One commonly requested feature we’ve heard has been the ability for customers to perform recurring, fully automated, exports of a SQL Database to a Storage account and we always landed up delivering this using custom toolset and SSIS, SSMS. Starting today this is now a built-in feature of Windows Azure.  You can now export transactional-consistent copies of your SQL Databases, in an automated recurring way, to a .bacpac file in a Storage account using any schedule you wish to define.

Here it is, and this is how it looks- “Spread the Word”

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Also, along with the above option to export, we handed over a New Database Creation wizard as well from Exported DB’s- this is just insane, absolutely exciting-

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Or

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Cost Impact

When an automated export is performed, Windows Azure will first do a full copy of your database to a temporary database prior to creating the .bacpac file. This is the only way to ensure that your export is transitionally consistent (this database copy is then automatically removed once the export has completed). As a result, you will be charged for this database copy on the day that you run the export. Since databases are charged by the day, if you were to export every day, you could in theory double your database costs.  If you run every week then it would be much less.

If your storage account is in a different region from the SQL Database, you will be charged for network bandwidth.  If your storage account is in the same region there are no bandwidth charges.  You’ll then be charged the standard Windows Azure Storage rate (which is priced in GB saved) for any .bacpac files you retain in your storage account.

Conditions to set up Automated Export

Note that in order to set up automated export, Windows Azure has to be allowed to access your database (using the server login name/password you configured in the automated export rule in the screen-shot above) . To enable this, go to the “Configure” tab for your database server and make sure the switch is set to “Yes”:

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SQL Databases: Announcing New Premium Tier for Windows Azure SQL Databases

Today, we’re excited to announce the preview of a new Premium Tier for Windows Azure SQL Databases that delivers more predictable performance for business-critical applications.  The Premium Tier helps deliver more powerful and predictable performance for cloud applications by dedicating a fixed amount of reserved capacity for a database including its built-in secondary replicas. This capability will help you scale databases even better and with more isolation.

Reserved capacity is ideal for cloud-based applications with the following requirements:

  • High Peak Load – An application that requires a lot of CPU, Memory, or IO to complete its operations. For example, if a database operation is known to consume several CPU cores for an extended period of time, it is a candidate for using a Premium database.
  • Many Concurrent Requests – Some database applications service many concurrent requests. The normal Web and Business Editions in SQL Database have a limit of 180 concurrent requests. Applications requiring more connections should use a Premium database with an appropriate reservation size to handle the maximum number of needed requests.
  • Predictable Latency – Some applications need to guarantee a response from the database in minimal time. If a given stored procedure is called as part of a broader customer operation, there might be a requirement to return from that call in no more than 20 milliseconds 99% of the time. This kind of application will benefit from a Premium database to make sure that dedicated computing power is available.

To help you best assess the performance needs of your application and determine if your application might need reserved capacity, our Customer Advisory Team has put together detailed guidance. Read the Guidance for Windows Azure SQL Database premium whitepaper for tips on how to continually tune your application for optimal performance and how to know if your application might need reserved capacity. Additionally, our engineers have put together a whitepaper, Managing Premium Databases, on how to setup, use and manage your new premium database once you are accepted into the Premium preview and quota is approved.

Requesting an invitation to the reserved capacity preview requires two steps:

  1. Visit the Preview Features page to request access to the Premium preview program. Initial acceptance requires customers with active, paid Windows Azure subscriptions and account administrator responsibility.
  2. Once your subscription has been activated for the preview program, request a Premium database quota from either the server dashboard or server quickstart in the SQL Databases extension of the Windows Azure Management Portal.

For a closer look at signing up for the Premium preview, please review the short tutorial page, Sign up for Premium preview for Windows Azure SQL Database.  For more details on Premium for SQL Database pricing, please visit the Windows Azure SQL Database pricing page.

NOTE: There are some more changes to the Traffic manager which is now included in the Windows Azure Portal as well. Will write about it in next blog probably.

Happy times in the cloud !!!

Comments

  • Anonymous
    July 23, 2013
    I've been able to successfully do an automated export if I use the login set up when initially provisioning the SQL Azure database server. But I've been trying to figure out if there's some way to use a separate login for the export. I've set up a new login in the master database with the dbmanager role and a matching one in the database with db_owner, but the export doesn't seem to work. Is there any guidance on what permissions a custom login/user needs to be able to have the automated export work successfully?

  • Anonymous
    July 26, 2013
    I have exactly the same question and behaviour. For no one should use their main account. In any case, my main accounts password is longer than 12 characters password. Why this limit? So, the question is: How do I create a separate user that works? What roles give permision to copy the database and then read from the copy?

  • Anonymous
    July 28, 2013
    Same issue here - original password is > 12 characters. Created a new user with dbOwner priv, but automated export just fails silently and no backup is made.

  • Anonymous
    July 28, 2013
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    July 30, 2013
    Same problem for me. One additional question: is there a place where you can see a log for this export so we can see the error message?

  • Anonymous
    August 02, 2013
    Please see my new Blog on the automated export permissions, it should be up soon.

  • Anonymous
    August 02, 2013
    Let me also answer the questions regarding the 12 Character password issue and Log viewer for database exports:

  1. The issue with 12 Characters password issue has been accepted by the PG and the fix should be releasing this week on Thursday 8th of August 2013 (NOTE: the date must not be considered as an actual release date, it is just an indicative date). I will update the blog once i have got a final confirmation and i test it myself.
  2. Also the user will now have access to the logs in the next release which is targeted this week (8th of August 2013), however we also will record a log history of the export job and expose that to users so they can see the history of failures / successes. Thanks heaps to Stephen Siciliano for helping me out with these questions, much appreciated.

  • Anonymous
    August 07, 2013
    Can you post a link to your blog post on the automated export permissions? I haven't been able to find it yet. Thanks!

  • Anonymous
    August 16, 2013
    I finally got an automated export to work with a custom login. However, that login had to be the owner of the database; simply granting dbmanager permissions was not sufficient (as the 'create database as copy of' that is done as part of the export won't work). I created a login called 'dbbackup' and gave it the dbmanager role. I then connected to my SQL Azure server in SQL Server Management Studio as that login and then created a new database, so my dbbackup login was the owner of the new db. I then set up an automated export on the database using the dbbackup login credentials, and it eventually worked (although there seemed to be a substantial delay between my scheduled time and when the export finally showed up in the storage account; not sure when the export actually kicked off). I haven't checked to see if the sa-level account for the server can do an automated export for a database owned by another login; I previously verified that it can export a database that it owns.

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2013
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2013
    Thanks, look forward to seeing the post, glad to hear I'm on the right track. The exports seemed to run at the correct time over the weekend. One thing I did notice is that the Last Exported date on the dashboard for the database in the Azure management portal reflects the date of the first successful backup, but not the most recent, but that's a minor issue.

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2013
    Also just confirmed that even the administrator account for the database server can't do a copy of a database it doesn't own, so I imagine it won't do an export either as a result.

  • Anonymous
    August 21, 2013
    I finally got it to work one time with 1 database. But i have a set of 4 databases that needs to be backup everyday. I scheduled the 4 databases to automatically export. Next day I checked but there were no backups created. Does anyone know if it is a limitation that you can only backup 1 database at the same time?

  • Anonymous
    August 21, 2013
    @BenM Have you considered that you could run save some money if you will not run backups at the same time... If you run backups same time, you will be charged for 4 extra DB but if you run export in sequence then you will have on 1 extra DB existing at the time and since the cost is daily (not hourly), you will only pay for the 1 extra DB. At least this is how I have understood the cost policy, please correct me if I'm wrong =) For your problem I'm afraid I cannot help, not yet so familiar with this.

  • Anonymous
    August 21, 2013
    @Quest I haven't thought about money yet, because I didn't get it working yet. But thanks for the headsup. I did already try to run the exports in sequence. I scheduled the exports with an hour between every start of the export. It gave the same result unfortunally... No backups the next day.

  • Anonymous
    August 28, 2013
    @Richardlw Yes, correct

  • Anonymous
    August 28, 2013
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    August 28, 2013
    @BenM: What account are you using for the backup schedules? Remember, if its not the provisioned server account or the account whose credentials were used to create the database you are backing up, you wont be able to take backups of those databases. Let me know if you want me to look at it, I would love to. My email id is tarasha@microsoft.com, so email me with a time frame and I will try and test the backups with you using a live meeting or teamviewer... let me know.

  • Anonymous
    September 03, 2013
    @Tara Shankar Jana: It's working now. I scheduled the exports with an hour between every start of the export. I thought it didn't work, but somehow on a certain moment there were 4 backups on the storage account. I think it has something to do with the start date and frequency I set. For example, if I set the start date today and the frequency on 7, then it makes it's first automated export 7 days later (but not sure about that). Anyway I also misunderstand the frequency option. Thought that 7 days were 7 days a week (so every day). Actually this is, if i'm correct, once a week (1 backup after every 7 days). So I changed this too. About costs... Business requirements require daily backups. It's working so far now. So thanks for all the info.

  • Anonymous
    January 06, 2014
    Is there a way to script the Automated Export configuration?  I have over 100 databases that need to be configured.

  • Anonymous
    January 19, 2014
    Great feature - does it support federated databases?

  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2014
    @mkellerm- At this point we don’t offer a way to script the Automated Export configuration. Unfortunately, the API is not currently documented, but it is certainly something our developers are working on for the future. I understand the pain but that's how it is, we are getting there slowly gradually!

  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2014
    @ma- Note that even if you did export federated databases, there is no way to import them. So it is not really useful to you, at the most basic level. Please note that we are publicly guiding people to NOT use federations. msdn.microsoft.com/.../dn495641.aspx If you would like help getting to not use federations, we can arrange to have free consulting to help migrate to a manual sharding model, please let us know and we will facilitate.

  • Anonymous
    March 18, 2014
    We have 2 azure databases - Validation database backups run just fine. Our production database - creates the copy but does not export as a bacpac in the storage container. I looked at the error message and it said the service was busy. I have production backing up at 11:30pm and validation backing up at 1:00 am to 2 different storage containers. I tried to export AutomatedSqlExport_Prod just now and got an error.  something about it is part of a scheduled service? I'm using the login that created the database. We exported the data out of another database and created this database from it. Do you think I need to update credentials?  I tried doing this and get an error that this version of sql does not have create credentials. Please let me know what you think.

  • Anonymous
    August 13, 2015
    Any way we could encrypt the export.

  • Anonymous
    May 01, 2016
    According to above Theory 1) if my client has basic level database and its price per month is $4.98 and Database will be exported everyday. so cost will be double according to above theory. 2) if my client has standard level database and its price per month 15.03 $ and Database will be exported everyday.so this cost will be double according to above theory.Actually My Question is I want to know the price of Automated Database Export is be changed according to pricing tier (basic and standard) of Azure database ??

    • Anonymous
      May 04, 2016
      Hi Sami,The post is old and SQLDB Automated Export is still in preview, and hence it isn't recommended for production use. Did you know we already backup your databases? You can restore databases from automatic backups using the Point-In-Time Restore and Geo-Restore capabilities. I would highly encourage that we reply on automatic-backups compared to automated-exports.I might be removing the post due to its age and limited relevance at this stage.