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The Voice of the DBA

Cloud Safe

I saw a question recently from an individual that was trying to decide if it made sense to move their databases to the cloud. In this case, management wanted to move, but the technical staff had concerns about Disaster Recovery in the cloud. These are very valid concerns for any system, as technical staff is often responsible for data, regardless of who decides on the architecture of a system.

The concerns got me thinking a bit. Is the cloud safer for DR? It's certainly an "it depends" question, especially as the "cloud" isn't necessarily the same thing for each of us. Some of us would use IaaS, with VMs in the cloud. Others might choose PaaS, with RDS or Azure SQL Database as a platform. Still others might want something like Managed SQL Instances, which is like IaaS+, or maybe PaaS#. I'm not completely sure how to classify this.

In any case, your choice of cloud architecture can mean better or worse DR. The closer you are to IaaS, the more that you still have the same responsibilities that you might have inside your own data center. The difference is that hardware replacements or options are often quicker to procure, though perhaps with limited choice.

If you choose PaaS, then you have different DR capabilities and responsibilities. Your vendor might handle some aspects of DR and remove the need for you to worry about hardware, or regular backups, but you might need to worry about other items. Your vendor might give you PIT recovery, but you might not want a database replacement in a busy system, especially if you've processed a few thousand transactions since someone ran that UPDATE without a WHERE batch. In that case, perhaps you want to ensure you can restore your database elsewhere, or you have other options.

Many of us know that managing systems is complex work. Not every environment can be handled in the same way, and we often implement exceptions in both technology and staff knowledge. Ensuring your application and environment can recovery from a DR situation often requires detailed knowledge of both requirements and capabilities of the environment. While I'm not afraid of migrating to the cloud, I'd want to be sure I was prepared to answer questions from management if there are issues. After all, they're going to look to me, not some vendor, for answers.

Steve Jones from SQLServerCentral.com

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Featured Contents

Restore a Database with CDC Enabled

Ganapathi varma Chekuri from SQLServerCentral.com

In this post, I’m going to talk about an issue that I found while restoring a backup of CDC enabled database to different SQL instance. You may receive below warning message that includes information about the cause of the warning, which can help you to resolve the issue. More »

Updating an expired SQL Server TDE certificate

Additional Articles from MSSQLTips.com

Simon Liew explains how to generate a new TDE certificate to replace the previous, and also looks at the steps needed if the database is in an Availability Group. More »

How to monitor the impact of patching on SQL Server performance

In this article, Redgate use the Spectre/Meltdown bugs as means to demonstrate how you can use a tool like SQL Monitor to assess the impact of patching on your SQL Server estate. More »

From the SQLServerCentral Blogs - Power BI Custom Visuals Class (Module 88 – Pulse Chart)

Devin Knight from SQLServerCentral Blogs

In this module you will learn how to use the Pulse Chart Custom Visual. The Pulse Chart can easily display... More »

From the SQLServerCentral Blogs - Power BI Screen Reader Accessibility

meaganl from SQLServerCentral Blogs

I recently wrote a post on the BlueGranite blog called Improving Screen Reader Accessibility in Power BI Reports. It contains... More »

Question of the Day

Today's Question (by Steve Jones):

On SQL Server 2016, what type of data type can I pass into SET CONTEXT_INFO?

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Yesterday's Question of the Day

Yesterday's Question (by Steve Jones):

I added this data to my table:

 INSERT dbo.Customer ( CustomerName , statusid , CompressedDescription ) VALUES ('Acme', 1, COMPRESS('The number one source for all those road runner capturing schemes'))

How do I get the description back in its original text?

Answer: SELECT CAST(DECOMPRESS(c.CompressedDescription) AS VARCHAR(MAX)) FROM dbo.Customer AS c WHERE c.CustomerName = 'Acme';

Explanation:

The reverse of the COMPRESS() function is the DECOMPRESS function. This needs to be cast back to the original datatype to get the data.

Ref: DECOMPRESS() - click here

» Discuss this question and answer on the forums

Featured Script

String Search

Patrick Slesicki from SQLServerCentral.com

For SQL Server versions 2012 and later.

Select the database to use.

Input a value for @MyString that you want to search for.

Select options for datatype and wildcard use.

Execute.

If results are returned, the content of the column SQLCommand sould be copied and pasted into a new query window and executed for the final results.

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