It’s been just over a week since Windows Azure announced the GA of Infrastructure Services, marking the beginning of a fully supported Infrastructure as a Service in Windows Azure, with SQL Server as a major component.
Pre-installed SQL Server VMs are available for pay-per-hour usage in the Windows Azure gallery. Currently Enterprise, Standard and Web edition VMs running on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 are available, with more SQL Server editions coming soon. SQL Server editions running on Windows Server 2012 images are also on the way. For more details on the scenarios and benefits of running SQL Server workloads on Windows Azure Virtual Machines, please visit the SQL Server blog post here.
We are very happy to announce that the updated technical documentation for deploying and running SQL Server in Windows Azure Infrastructures Services is now available online. When deploying SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machines, we recommend that you follow the detailed guidance given in the new SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machines documentation in the library. This documentation includes a series of articles and tutorials that provide detailed guidance on:
- Getting Started with SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machines
- Getting Ready to Migrate to SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machines
- SQL Server Deployment in Windows Azure Virtual Machines
- Connectivity Considerations for SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machines
- Performance Considerations for SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machines
- Security Considerations for SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machines
- Troubleshooting and Monitoring for SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machines
- High Availability and Disaster Recovery for SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machines
- Backup and Restore for SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machines
- SQL Server Business Intelligence in Windows Azure Virtual Machines
Over the next few weeks we are planning a series of blog posts to provide more detailed information on specific SQL Server topics. Subjects in the pipeline include: high availability, disaster recovery, performance, application migration and security. Let us know what topics you would like to see covered in this series by adding comments to this post.
SQL Server Team