I have in hands a task where I'm required to copy a 300GB SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition to Amazon's AWS RDS.
The issue is that a couple weeks ago, AWS finally released a feature that allows the restore of a .bak file generated by T-SQL's EXPORT command (or SSMS's one). This is a good start, but the procedure of exporting the DB, copying the .bak file to S3 and then restoring it to RDS takes about 6h.
During that time, our application servers must be down so that the databases are in sync and; as we are talking about our website's database, 6h is something very difficult to cope with.
We have already tried AWS's DMS service and RedGate's Data Compare to no avail...
Anyone has an idea how this can be done or do we really have to accept the 6h downtime?
The features of SQL Server standard edition on AWS and rest environment is detailed in TaskLance blog
Issues with MS SQL Server Standard edition in AWS: http://tasklance.com/index.php/2016/03/16/issues-with-ms-sql-server-standard-edition-in-aws-2/
Related
I am reading some guides to see how to backup/restore a Microsoft Azure SQL Server database.
Searching Microsoft documentation, it seems that:
Azure SQL Database has automated backups, so Azure Data Studio doesn't perform Azure SQL Database backup and restore. For more information, see Learn about automatic SQL Database backups.
After further reading, I see we can indeed restore a DB by creating a replica of it at a previous time point, but this costs ~80 euros if I read it correctly, as it basically creates a second instance of the db. Also, It seems to be able to go back in time only some limited time.
Is there a cost-less (without incurring additional cost to the existing costs) way to create a "permanent" off line copy of the database and restore it to an Azure SQL Database?
The first part of this question is similar to Is there a way to download the azure sql database managed backups - though I am not asking if it's possible, and I do not care about any format of the backup, and do not want to download the Azure backups. I would be happy creating my own backup so I am pretty sure the answer to my question is that is possible even though that answer is probably impossible.
Is there a cost-less (without incurring additional cost to the
existing costs) way to create a "permanent" off line copy of the
database and restore it to an Azure SQL Database?
You would have to install an extension to use DACPAC and BACPAC features in Azure Data studio.
Name: SQL Server Dacpac
Id: microsoft.dacpac
Description: Manage data-tier applications
Version: 1.8.0
Publisher: Microsoft
Here is a simple way to export DB as Bacpac, you can similarly use the [Import Bacpac] Operation to restore.
I am Connected to Microsoft SQL Server, backing up a SQL DB. But you can do this connecting to on-premise SQL server too.
What's the actual objective?
You can restore an Azure SQL to a point in time. Go into the Azure portal and do it in there. (Azure Data Studio may not have a nice way for you to do this)
By offline do you mean an on-premises (non cloud) copy? again what is the objective? Is it disaster recovery? Your on premises copy is more likely to be lost than the Azure one.
You can also point in time restore to another Azure database. If your DB <2Gb then you can just retore to the basic edition which is 4.25 Euro a month. Or you can use the serverless option which is even cheaper
But you have to consider why you are doing this. Azure has a lot of redundancy already built in which makes these kinds of manual offline copies and processes unecessary.
We have 2 SQL Server databases. One of them is to be moved to AWS cloud.
Is Amazon RDS the ONLY approach to move the SQL Server to AWS?
What is the best way to automate data transfer of table data from the SQL Server that IS in the cloud to the SQL Server that is NOT in the cloud?
The volume and complexity of data is not high in our case. We need to migrate only ONE table and we'd like to automate it to run every night.
Would AWS Glue be useful for this? Would it help in loading data from INSIDE the cloud to OUTSIDE?
I also just found DMS - https://aws.amazon.com/dms/
But the homepage says "Migrate your databases **to** AWS with minimal downtime"
Can I do the opposite with DMS? Can I migrate data **FROM** AWS to outside AWS?
Amazon RDS is not the only approach to host SQLServer in the cloud. You can use an EC2 instance and install SQLServer manually. This could make sense in case you want to have sys_admin privileges. But be careful, as you would have to do patching all by yourself. I would not recommend doing that.
DMS is a good way to migrate your data every night. The service you are looking for is continuous data replication from DMS. Glue can also be used for this task. Glue's purpose was never to do database replication. Hence, it could be a pain monitoring the replication & debug in case of errors. That is why I would recommend DMS.
I've Googled this a lot and can't really find anything. The SQL Server for our main system is on-premise, not in the cloud. I figured out how to copy our nightly SQL Server backup to Azure. I also want to copy the Transaction Logs each time they roll so if our server dies we have the transaction logs, can restore to that point and only lose at most five minutes of work, not potentially a full day.
I'm really new to Azure, just starting to learn it. Is there an easy way to copy the logs to Azure? Can it be done within SSMS? Does someone already have a script they'd be willing to share? Thanks for any tips you might have!
Yes, there is SQL Server Backup to Azure Tool
Microsoft SQL Server Backup to Microsoft Azure Tool enables backup to
Azure Blob Storage and encrypts and compresses SQL Server backups
stored locally or in the cloud.
There's also Powershell option:
Use PowerShell to Backup Multiple Databases to Windows Azure Blob Storage Service
This topic provides sample scripts that can be used to automate backups to Windows Azure Blob storage service using PowerShell cmdlets. PowerShell support for Backup and Restore to Windows Azure Blob Storage service is introduced in SQL Server 2012 SP1 CU4.
The parent article gives you TSQL options as well.
I'm signed up to Amazon Web Service (AWS) free tier, which allows you to run some very limited instances of EC2 and RDS for free.
I've created an RDS instance running SQL Server 2012 Express - this does not allow remote desktop access, so I also have an EC2 instance running Windows Server 2012 base, and I have installed SQL Server Management Studio and I'm able to connect.
I would like to import some kind of sample database - for example, Northwind, AdventureWorks, or anything that has at least a handful of tables and relationships. The reason is I want to just experiment and practice on a few things (for example, I want to try out the EXPLAIN feature to get to learn how the relational algebra works and how SQL plans out various test queries).
My problem is that Amazon's RDS does not allow me to restore a .BAK file, as local disk access is not allowed, and neither is FILESTREAM, so I can't just download a sample database backup and restore it.
Amazon document their workaround here, which involves creating a local instance of SQL Server on the EC2 instance (my machine with SQL Server Management Studio installed, which I have RDP access to), and use the Generate and Publish Scripts Wizard to import data from the EC2 to the RDS. My problem here is that I don't have enough disk space to install a local database instance - as I'm on the free tier I'm limited to 30GB total disk space for the server, so the OS + SQL Server Management Studio leaves just a couple of gigs. So I'm totally stuck.
Does anyone have any genius ideas here? Maybe some pre-made bulk insert scripts I can use (I can't find any) or some other solution? The database doesn't have to be big, just something to work with. Of course I could always pay to increase my disk space, and go through the whole tedious process outlined by Amazon, but I'd rather not!
Thanks
I got a perfect answer over on dba.stackexchange.com - there's a mini version of Northwind (2.6MB) here which has a script for creating the schema / importing the data. Thanks Tripp for suggesting I ask the question over there!
Reading some conflicting answers from Google searches, not sure if the answer is Yes, No, or maybe.
I thought it was pretty clear when reading this:
Amazon RDS currently does not support the following SQL Server features:
The ability to run Reporting, Analysis, Integration, or Master Data Services on the same server as the DB instance. If you need to do this, we recommend that you either install SQL Server on an EC2 instance or use an on-premise SQL Server instance to act as the Reporting, Analysis, Integration, or Master Data Services server.
Amazon now supports SSIS on RDS as of May 2020.
More info here