Introduction

The elastic database is a new feature offered for SQL Azure Databases. Elastic databases are useful when you have several databases and you want to monitor and manage all the databases at the same time. To do this, a pool is required. The pool allows handling several databases at the same time.

In this chapter, we will learn how to create the pool and add SQL Azure Databases to it.

Introduction

There are two main options in Azure to handle SQL databases:

• Azure SQL Database.
• SQL Server on Azure VM.

In this chapter, we will talk about the advantages and disadvantages of each option.

Azure is a simple and cheap way to have a Database. You can rent your Azure Database of 2 GB per 5 USD per month. That is a very cheap price. You can also administer your Database from your Android or your iPhone, which is very interesting.

It is also possible to create your Windows Application using Visual Studio and connect to SQL Azure. In this new chapter, we are going to create Windows application in C# and connect to a SQL Azure database. We are going to retrieve the information of a table stored in Azure in our Windows application.

Introduction

In this new article, we will use Visual Studio to connect to a SQL Server Database Installed in a Virtual Machine in Azure.

Visual Studio is one of the most popular development tools in the world and connecting to Azure with Visual Studio is a very common need.

We will modify an existing SQL Server table in Azure from Visual Studio. Later we will create a stored procedure and finally, we will create an inline table-valued function.

Introduction

In this chapter, we will work with Visual Studio to connect to SQL Databases in Azure.

The first part of this chapter will be to create a Database in the Azure Portal and the second part will be to connect in Visual Studio and create some Database Objects.

In order to have a well-configured cluster we need to setup the quorum properly, but there’s more…Here is where the Cloud Witness comes to help.

In this article, I’m going to present something that would be very useful if was already been released, but no, I need to anxiously wait for the next version of Windows Server to be released, in order to start implementing this. Even though, I’m going to share with you, SQL Shack reader, why I’m so excited with that small and simple feature.

One of the new features in SQL Server 2016 – and there is a lot – is the ability to stretch the on premise databases to an Azure environment.

This blogpost will cover some of the aspects of this – including:

• Primarily setup – how to get started
• Monitoring state of databases that are in ‘stretch mode’
• Daily work with stretch databases
• Backup – what’s good to know

Let’s continue the hybrid saga! After two articles talking about the Azure Blob Storage and what we can do using it, it’s time to check an alternative solution, that does the same of what was presented in the last article (a Hybrid Database used as archival solution for who didn’t read). This time we are not using the Azure Blob Storage, but we are still using Azure!

The feature is…Stretch Database

In continuation to our hybrid deployment series, we will check few more options in order to integrate on-premises and Azure, using of course SQL Server.

In the last article we talked about Azure Blob Storage and how to use this service to store a SQL Server database entirely there. Meaning that we can have our instance in our datacenter, see the server in front of you, and still have your database stored in the cloud, with your data and log files out of your disks.

Do you know that since SQL Server 2012 you can have your entire database stored in Azure, even if you have your server on-premises? This article will introduce you to this capability, showing the basic steps to allow your instance to be in contact with your Azure Blob Storage Account.

We hear a lot about hybrid SQL Server environments, but how to integrate my datacenter with Azure? Check this article and you will have a simple and effective explanation about the connectivity option!