Reading Paul Hebhardt’s editorial from SQL Central yesterday I became aware that SQL Azure now supports real world Backup and Restore. Previously we were restricted to simply performing a full point in time backup to blob storage. Now SQL Azure has plans that include real backup and restore capabilities.
According to MSDN there are three new SQL Azure tiers with different capacities and retention periods. Common to all tiers is the sequence of backup activities. Each database has a full backup weekly, a differential backup daily, and transactional backups every 5 minutes. With this cycle you can restore a database to periods of 5 minute segments. The time it takes to restore will be based on the number of differential and transaction logs you have to apply to the last full backup.
In my opinion, this is what has been missing since SQL Azure was released allowing it to be a true enterprise host. According to MSDN, “The full and differential backups are replicated across regions to ensure availability of the backups in the event of a disaster.”. While this is not complete without transaction logs, it is not that different than many of the Disaster Recovery Plans we have when self-hosting our database services.
Have these new service tiers been a factor for considering a move to SQL Azure? If not, what other roadblocks are you experiencing resulting in self-hosting your SQL Services? Share your thoughts here when you have a moment.
Cheers,
Ben