SQL Azure Backup & Restore Policies

Question

Hi,
We are new to Azure and we were wondering how and how long back we can access the backups? What is the process of restoring the data from the backup history?
and If we can recieve the backup as a file and import it to company's local database?

May we have a mid-day backup on demand? and if so what is the process and how it is being priced?

Thank you so much

Answer 1

Hello, actually we do all backup for you. That means you do not need to worry about data loss at all. You will always be able to get the latest version of the database. If something goes wrong, the database will automatically be restored. You can also import the data to your local database at any time you like.

But if you mean data versioning (for example, some wrong data is updated recently by a careless user, and you need to roll back to the version 1 week ago), you still need to implement your own solution. Currently we do not allow you to access the backup media on our servers. So you have to do a manual download of all data on a specific interval if you have such requirments. You can submit a feature request on http://www.mygreatwindowsazureidea.com/pages/34685-sql-azure-feature-voting.

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Lante, shanaolanxing This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Answer 2

Thanks for the response.

Could you also plese elaborate a bit more on what you mean by " the database will automatically be restored" ?

how long would be the down time, and how much data loss (will the last night backup be restored?) ?

Will you be offering data versioning of backups in future?

(and if possible) please let us know when you are planning to support some missing features, such as service broker, reporting and analysis services, or a support for more than 10G databases? is there any release plan for these or just in a agenda for more distance future?


Thank you so much.

Answer 3

From the FAQ on http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/faq/:

SQL Azure customers will have connectivity between the database and our Internet gateway. SQL Azure will maintain a “Monthly Availability” of 99.9% during a calendar month. “Monthly Availability Percentage” for a specific customer database is the ratio of the time the database was available to customer to the total time in a month. Time is measured in 5-minute intervals in a 30-day monthly cycle. Availability is always calculated for a full month. An interval is marked as unavailable if the customer’s attempts to connect to a database are rejected by the SQL Azure gateway.

Sorry I can't answer your second question. We can't talk about the road map on a public forum... However, you may want to check out this PDC session: http://microsoftpdc.com/Sessions/SVC52.

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Lante, shanaolanxing This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Answer 4

The Windows Azure SQL Database Backup and Restore article explains the latest options available to create backups and  links to how to articles.

Thanks,

Karthika

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Karthika [MSFT] This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.