[This article was contributed by the SQL Azure team.]

One of the great things about SQL Azure is how easy it is to get up and running.  If you have SQL Server experience, the process is even smoother. Check out this short 10 minute video where I’ll walk you through step-by-step the process to migrate an existing on-premises SQL Server Database to SQL Azure. The migration process in the video that I will go through will be in two parts – 1) migrating the database schema and then, 2) migrating the table data. 

By moving your data to SQL Azure, you can free up time and reduce risk associated with managing and maintaining your own SQL Server database servers.  Once the SQL Azure database is up and running, you can access it from anywhere on the internet, the data is highly available, scalable and reliable; and very few (if any) code changes will be required for existing client applications – in many cases it’s just a matter of changing the connection string to point to the cloud database.  Since SQL Azure utilizes SQL Server 2008 technology, the same data access libraries continue to work.  

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