Today, we are excited to announce support for automated backup and automated patching, available directly in the portal for SQL Server Azure Virtual Machines. Both of these features are built with the new SQL Server IaaS Agent, an Azure VM Extension, combining the power and management ease of SQL Server with the agility offered by extensions on Azure Virtual Machines, enabling single-click backup and patching configuration and management.
Using automated backup on SQL Virtual Machines deployed in Azure, you can configure a scheduled backup on SQL Server 2014 Enterprise. With a few clicks in the portal, you can control the retention period, the storage account for the backup, and the security/encryption policies of the database.
In addition to automated backup, we are also announcing automated patching for SQL Server VMs. This new solution allows you to define the maintenance window directly from the portal. The SQL Server IaaS Agent will configure Windows running on your Virtual Machine with your preferred maintenance settings, including the day for maintenance, the start time of the window and the proposed duration.
It is an exciting set of new capabilities that continues to show the integrated experience for running SQL Server on the fast scale-out and fast scale-up Azure Virtual Machines. We will continue to focus on these integrated experiences over the next few months.
For more details, check out the SQL Server blog post here. Go ahead, try these features out for yourself at https://portal.azure.com. Scale-out a bit.
