Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
The backups are transactionally consistent, just like the
AS COPY OF
feature of the
CREATE DATABASE
command.
The Enzo backup tool also allows you to schedule backup jobs to run in the Azure platform as well. Backups are
performed and run entirely in the cloud using a cloud agent. The agent has multiple sizes (matching the Windows
Azure Hosted Services sizes), allowing you determine how quickly you want your backup to execute. More
information on the Enzo Backup for SQL Azure tool can be found here:
Cloud Services
Red Gate is known for their SQL Server tools. They continue to create great products, and Cloud Services doesn't
disappoint. Cloud Services is a suite of tools that help manage your cloud applications. As part of this suite of tools
is the ability to back up your SQL Database. You can schedule backups to Windows Azure BLOB storage as well as
restore the backup to a new database or an existing SQL Database. More information on Red Gate's Cloud Services
can be found here:
Summary
In this chapter we discussed the various options for migrating your database schema and associated data to SQL
Azure. You learned that there are pros and cons to each method; for example, the SQL Server script-generation wizard
will script the schema as well as the data, but SSIS and the
bcp
utility do not. You also learned that if you use SQL
Server 2008 R2 or SQL Server 2012, you have the option to script for SQL Azure, which scripts the objects ready for
execution in the SQL Azure environment.
We also discussed the SQL Azure Copy feature, which allows you to make a copy of your SQL Azure database for
backup purposes.
With your database in SQL Azure, we can now focus on how to program applications for SQL Azure, the topic
of Chapter 5.
