we're close to migrating our legacy MS Access app to SQL Server for our internal warehouse management system. Our customers are often asking us for access to the data for e-commerce integration and general reporting. Once the migration is complete I would like to provide open access to the data via web services and odata. However I don't want to host these services as we are on a slow ADSL connection which won't cope with the traffic.
My question is, can I replicate (one-way) to a remote DB hosted by shared-hosting companies such as Hostgator? I see they have shared windows hosting with unlimited MS SQL DBs. Are there any special requirements on the hosted-side? For instance do I need to explicitly set-up replication on hosting db or is it managed on the client-side?
If this is possible then I might be able to run all our web services and reporting apps on the host's servers, and only the replicated data need travel over WAN. What sort of control is there over replication? Such as bandwidth throttling, replication periods etc? For instance when & how often does replication take place?
I'm new to SQL Server in general and some of the topics are a little overwhelming.
Thanks for your help.
You could try setting up transactional replication with a push subscription with the distributor on your side. The relevant bit is how the distribution agent connects to the subscriber. distrib.exe supports both trusted and SQL authentication, so you should be good to go either way.
Related
If I only have one VM in Azure I can get outtages at any time when Azure decides to reboot/reprovision my server. Therefor I have to at least two servers in an availability group to get a stable environment.
This is used by a web app (web roles) and an important aspect is that the databases are used for reading. They will get their data from sql replication from an on-premises database. The replication can be done separately to each database. Additionally using Azure Sql Database is not an option because we have not be able to implement a durable data sync solution (using Microsoft Sync Framework), Sql Database does not support sql replication, and constantly uploading the complete database would be too slow.
How should the database VMs be hosted and accessed to able to use Sql Server VMs?
One alternative is to use AlwaysOn Availability Groups. This however requires Sql Server Enterprise edition and the price is very high considering I need to have at least two servers. In this scenario I at least get one connection point behind which a sql server always should be answering. This is however beyond our reach because of the cost.
One alternative could be to use Traffic manager to round robin the connections. When the database server goes down we have to wait for TTL to expire before the webrole would refresh the ip address so that seems a big problem.
How should one host Sql Server VMs in Azure?
You can use FailoverPartner parameter in the connection string to specify the secondary replica address. You can see more in this article.
We have two Sql 2008 R2 database. First and main one is on-premise which is used by our stock management and accounting systems.
The second is for our web site and it is on a 3th party hosting firm and that database is updated manually by a standard XML file operation
(creating XML from on-premise database, sending it to web server, reading from XML file & insert/update/delete web database)
we need to get rid of that manual XML operation and sync that two databases automatically, but problem is our hosting firm does not allow "Replication" or "Linked Server" facilities on their "Sql Server" system. That's way we can not sync databases with these "Sql Server" facilities.
I am trying find out sync alternatives for that scenario without changing the hosting system.
What options can we use ?
Is Microsoft Sync Framework can be used for this scenario? ( I'm not sure if it is just for the Microsoft Azure Sql system)
Thanks…
if you're fine coding, then Sync Framework can do this.
Sync Framework can sync SQL Compact, Express, Server, Azure or LocalDB
But bear in mind that Sync Framework will need to create some Sync-related objects on your databases (triggers, stored procedures, tables, etc...)
It sounds like you need a hosting provider that provides these services.
It is typical for a hosting provider to provide an on-demand or always VPN connection to the production servers from the client location to the servers at the hosting location. Such a service is often needed for support of online systems. If you had such a connection then having SQL Server do syncs would be no problem.
Any major (Rack Space, Peer1, etc) provider would be able to set up such a system.
It probably won't be as inexpensive as your current provider.
Well if changing a provider is not an option, at list in the short term and you need something right now, you can always automate parts or all your current process.
For that you can at least use:
PowerShell (or even plain old cmd.exe) script(batch) and bcp.exe to export and import your files on both ends and PowerShell and ftp to transfer your files from one server to another.
SQLServer Integration Services on premises to export and send files via ftp to your hosting location. And SSIS to grab and import those files at your hosting location.
I have a simple ms sql 2012 express database & a simple VB Express 2010 application as its front end.
Can I simply host my MS SQL database on Azure & update the application to interrogate the hosted database? This would mean, the application would still be local, but the DB would be hosted. My offices are distributed & if we could do this it would save quite a bit of hassle.
Do I need to use a virtual machine, cloud services or straight hosting? Its difficult for me to understand the subtleties each service.
I've had a look at the azure services information and the documentation is pitched a little high for me. I just wanted to know if this is relatively simple thing to do & if anyone has has any pointers to How To's or Noob guides to azure.
It's absolutely possible and in fact, super easy to set up.
Check out this simple step-by-step instruction on how to set up SQL Server DB on Windows Azure - https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/common-tasks/sql-azure-management/
You can even connect to it from your SQL Server Management Studio just like you would connect to a local database or a database on your network.
Ideally - yes, you can change the connection string used by the VB desktop app to reference the Windows Azure SQL Database instance instead of the local database. That said, SQL Database is not 100% compatible with SQL Server. Be sure to check out the differences at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ff394115.aspx
Can I simply host my MS SQL database on Azure & update the application
to interrogate the hosted database?
Yes, your SQL Azure database is accessible via a connection string, but you have to make sure that you create a firewall rule in SQL Azure to allow your locally hosted or remotely hosted applications to access the database. Everything is turned off by default.
Do I need to use a virtual machine, cloud services or straight
hosting?
I'm not exactly sure what you're asking here, but a VM may be overkill, as that gives you basically a place to host a VM in Azure. You control the O/S, patching, etc. A cloud service (a web or worker role) is a little less maintenance heavy as the O/S, patches, updates, etc. are maintained by Azure and you just worry about your application. Straight hosting - are you talking about hosting on 1&1 or GoDaddy or something? If so, that's really no different than your VB app running locally and accessing your Azure database. For this option, just make sure you have your firewall rules set properly, otherwise you won't be able to access the database.
Hopefully this helps. Good luck!
Azure has some specific requirements that need to be met (like every table has to have a Clustered Index), and it does not support some functionality that is available on "normal" SQL Server (like replication, FILESTREAM data, or data compression).
Other than that, as long as your app meets the requirements, there should not be a reason for it not to work on Azure. The majority of the functionality not supported by Azure is most likely out6 of the scope of what a "noob" would implement, so you probably are safe.
However, Azure might be overly expensive for your needs. It might be cheaper to go for hosting the database somewhere. This would mean you would only have to change the connection string of the application to point to the new database server (though there could be additional limitations imposed by your hosting provider).
Good luck with whichever option you end up taking!
I´m running 2 servers on Rackspace. I have set up a load balancer that balances the traffic between these two servers.
Each of these servers runs a Glassfish v3 server with a Java EE application on it, that offers a web interface to write some data into server database. The problem is that I need to have the same data on each database (server 1 database and server 2 database).
A resolution to this problem is mirroring of databases.
I would like to ask if there is some automated system to mirror these databases inside the rackspace?
Furthermore I ve found Xendros database cloud that is able to work with Rackspace Cloud. Is it possible to mirror these databases inside the Xeround?
Or are there any better solutions ?
Thanks for answers :)
With Xeround you do not need to mirror your database, you create a single database instance and direct your application servers to work with this instance.
For more information you are welcomed to visit our web site http://www.xeround.com
I was readin this month edition of SQL Server Magazine and in an article about securing Sql Server environment , the author mentioned that developer should try to have the website and the databases run in separate servers for security. I have a shared hosting account and was wondering if it makes sense to buy a second account to move all databases there. Or does it only make sense when using dedicated servers? How would it affect performances on my website?
I use asp.net and have a hosting account with DisountAsp
That article probably doesn't apply to your situation. Running the database on a separate server is a measure to protect against root compromise of the web server hosting machine. I a shared hosting environment the same situation would result in compromising all accounts on that machine anyway. Depending on the particular settings of your hosting, your account database may alreayd be on a separate server.
Besides, with a shared hosting account is very unlikely you'll even be able to query a database from another account.
If you buy a second server, what will it be, a VPS? I imagine you will get more CPU cycles on a VPS with a dedicated database server than a dedicated machine with multiple databases, but who really knows.
Still, your host isn't running websites on their shared database servers, so what's the difference, security wise?
Performance would me my number one driving factor. I mean if someone compromises your web server, unless your connection strings are encrypted, they've got what they need to connect to the DBs.