Database on Azure

Abstract: Data is the lifeblood of business. Ensuring that it’s secure, available and easily accessible are fundamental requirements of any IT department. More importantly, ensuring that data is used well—to drive processes, inform decision making and react intelligently to changing circumstances—is what differentiates successful businesses from those left behind.

The manner in which businesses ensure the availability of data is rapidly changing. Hosted services—and the very idea of software as a service—for everything from core data center functions like e-mail and business intelligence, to personal applications like photo-sharing and file synchronization, have become an everyday part of how we interact with our information. Cloud computing has enjoyed a meteoric rise over the past few years, both as a concept and as a practical component of IT infrastructure.

One particularly compelling cloud-computing solution is Microsoft SQL Azure. SQL Azure is a powerful, familiar infrastructure for storing, managing and analyzing data. It also provides the benefits of cloud computing. Shared, hosted infrastructure helps reduce both direct and indirect costs. A pay-as-you-go model helps achieve greater efficiency. And high availability (HA) and fault tolerance are built in.

This whitepaper explains the overview evolving cloud computing model and SQL Server Azure on cloud platform. It also briefs about Key features, Architecture scenarios.
Finally the paper perspective on SQL Database Azure and the future road map of the platform and how its different feature is going to help is reducing the cost,managing the resources in efficient way, Scalability, and concept of pay what you use. This is definitely
going to have its pros and cons but after overcoming few limitations in improving seems to be a promising one.

Keywords: Mssql Azure, Azure Database, Azure

Introduction: SQL Azure is the latest, cutting-edge solution developed by Microsoft as an implementation of the Data as a Service (DaaS) model of cloud-computing. SQL Azure is part of the Windows Azure.

Platform: a suite of services providing hosted computing, infrastructure, Web services and data services.The SQL Azure component provides the full relational database functionality of SQL Server, but it also provides functionality as a cloud-computing service, hosted in Microsoft datacenters around the globe.One of the first things to understand in any discussion of Azure versus on-premises SQL Server databases is that you can use it all and from anywhere having internet connectivity. Microsoft’s Data Platform leverages SQL Server technology and makes it available across physical on-premises machines, private cloud environments, third-party hosted private cloud environments, and public cloud.

When designing any application, four basic options are available for hosting the SQL Server part of the application:

• SQL Server on non-virtualised physical machines
• SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machine (public cloud)
• Azure SQL Database (public cloud)
• SQL Server in on-premises virtualised machines (private cloud)

Evolution of Cloud Computing Model

To obtain better returns on their investments in Information Technology (IT), enterprises typically focuses on adopting several technologies, transformation programs etc. Cloud computing is one of them. Cloud computing is an internet based services delivery model where services are hosted over the internet by a service provider. Cloud service providers have infrastructure, such as, servers, hardware and software and offers this as a service to enterprises.

SQL Database in Cloud / Azure

Before Cloud companies that provide Internet-based Services are facing many challenges today. Now a days user wants to access all data and all possible means of device and location they don’t prefer any kind of limitations. Today there are several options for hosting cloud based SQL databases, including both Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). Creating an SQL database using PaaS is quick and simple, and will likely meet the needs of most basic applications. IaaS is more complex, requiring the creation of a virtual machine (VM). In the case of IaaS, however, it is infinitely easier to get an SQL server up and running as compared to running it on-premises. For these reasons and more it might be time to consider moving your databases to the cloud. From the IT management perspective. SQL Azure is built on the same Microsoft SQL Server® technologies and proven to provide high availability, reliability, and security.

From the business perspective, SQL Azure offers a cost-effective approach for managing data, with a flexible consumption-based pricing plan, near-zero capital and operational expenditures, and the ability to quickly and easily scale up or down as your needs change.

Architectural Overview

Provisioning Model
SQL Azure is designed to support extreme scale and low cost while providing a familiar environment to administrators and developers.

Windows Azure Platform Accounts
To use SQL Azure, you must begin by creating a Windows Azure platform account. Using this account, you can access all of the facilities within the Windows Azure platform. This account is also used to bill for usage for all Windows Azure platform services.

SQL Azure Servers
Each Windows Azure account can contain multiple SQL Azure servers. These servers are not implemented as SQL Server instances; instead, you can view them as logical concept that is used to provide a central administrative point for multiple SQL Azure servers.Each server includes logins, just as you find in on premise SQL Server instances, and you can also specify the geographic region your server is located in at this level .SQL Azure provides you totally a different interface to
maintain different types of Administration.

SQL Azure Databases
Creation of tables, Views, SPs , Databases are still the same.SQL Azure Databases are implemented as replicated data partitions across multiple physical computers geographic location that is specified for the SQL Azure Database server that is hosting the database an SQL Azure data centers within multiple servers. This architecture provides automatic fail over and load balancing. In this way, SQL Azure Database achieves high availability and stability for all applications from the smallest to the largest without requiring intensive administrative effort.

Key Features:

a) Effective Manageability: SQL Azure Database offers the high availability and functionality of an enterprise data center without the administrative overhead that is associated with an on premise solution.This self-managing capability enables organizations to provision data services for applications throughout the enterprise without adding to burden and could use its technology-savvy employees from their core tasks to maintain a departmental database application.

b) Improved Low-Friction Provisioning: When you use the traditional on premise data infrastructure, the time that it takes to deploy and secure servers,network components, and software can slow your ability to prototype or roll out new data-driven solutions. However, by using a cloud based solution such as SQL Azure, you can provision your data-storage needs in minutes and respond rapidly to changes in demand. This reduces the initial costs of data services by enabling you to provision only what you need,secure in the knowledge that you can easily extend your cloud-based data storage if required at a future
time.

c) High Availability: SQL Azure is built on robust and proven Windows Server® and SQL Server technologies, and is flexible enough to cope with any variations in usage and load. The service replicates multiple redundant copies of your data to multiple physical servers to ensure data availability and business continuity. In the case of a disaster, SQL Azure provides automatic failover to ensure maximum availability for your application with minimum downtime.When you move to SQLAzure, you no longer need to back up, store, and protect data yourself it helps you in saving time and cost.

d) Scalability: Another key advantage of the cloud computing model is the ease with which you can scale your solution. Using SQL Azure, you can create solutions that meet your scalability requirements,whether your application is a small departmental application or the next global giant in the market.

e) Global Scalability: A pay-as-you-grow pricing model allows you to quickly provision new databases as needed or scale down the services without the financial costs associated with unused capacity. With a database scale out strategy your application can utilize the processing power of hundreds of servers and store terabytes of data.SQL Azure runs in worldwide data centers, so you can reach new markets immediately. If you want to target
a specific region, you can deploy your database at the closest data center.

f) Familiar Client Development Model: When developers create on premise applications that use SQL Server as a data store, they employ client libraries that use the Tabular Data Stream (TDS) protocol to communicate between client and server. There is a large global community of developers who are familiar with SQL Server and have experience of using one of the many client access libraries that are available for SQL Server, such as Microsoft ADO.NET, Open Database Connectivity (ODBC), JDBC and the SQL Server driver for PHP.SQL Azure provides the same TDS interface as SQL Server, so developers can use the same tools and libraries to build client applications for data that is in the cloud.

g) Synchronization and Support for Offline
Scenarios: SQL Azure is part of the rich Microsoft data platform which integrates with Microsoft Sync Framework to support occasionally connected synchronization scenarios. For example, by using SQL Azure and the Sync Framework, on premise applications and client devices can synchronize with each other via a common data hub in the cloud.

Scenario:

Web Application
Most Web sites require a database to store user input,e-commerce transactions, and content, or for other purposes. Traditionally, such a data-driven Web site is implemented with a database server in the same data center as the Web server.

Using SQL Azure, Web developers can choose to place data in the cloud where it is highly available and fault tolerant. As with the departmental application scenario, you can host your Web application on your own server, or by using a third-party Web host, and access the data in SQL Azure across the Internet.

Data Hub
In a data hub scenario, you typically want to enable various mobile, desktop and remote users to collaborate by using the same set of data. Consider an EBay company that has a large sales force that consists of thousands of people who are scattered across Globe. Keeping customer accounts, stocks and offers data synchronized across is a constant problem. The first part of the problem is maintaining stock details from warehouse. The second part is getting information about various offers on different products and customer data.

The eBay Company needs a solution that will:

• Keep each pricing system up to date with the latest pricing information
• Keep the warehouse system up to date with stock information after different transactions, maintaining the isolation of transactions. Currently, all the data is stored in a central SQL Server database in the data center. In addition, employees in the sales force use an application that runs on their portable computers and stores data in SQL
  Server Express. The IT department does not want to open the firewall to the on premise data center to provide possibly insecure access from each salesperson’s portable computer. The development team can provide a safe and fully synchronized solution that uses SQL Azure, by completing the following three tasks:
• Create a database in SQL Azure to store product data and customer data.
• Create a Sync Framework provider for the data center.

This sync Framework provider keeps product and customer data synchronized between the data center and the SQL Azure data hub.

Create a second Sync Framework provider for the sales force’s portable computers. This Sync Framework provider keeps product, account, stock and customer data synchronized between different departments and the SQL Azure data hub.

Product pricing data flows from the enterprise database, through SQL Azure between thousands of salespeople. Customer contact data flows from more than so many salespeople, through SQL Azure, to the enterprise database. When a salesperson’s portable computer is offline, changes that occur to local data are tracked. When the portable computer’s Internet connection is restored, the Sync Framework provider enumerates these changes and sends them to SQL Azure. The safety of the corporate data center is ensured.

Conclusion:

SQL Azure Database is a cloud-based database service that offers developer agility, application flexibility, and virtually unlimited scalability, cost-effective delivery model. In addition, support for the most prevalent Internet communication protocols ensures ease of deployment and use. The benefits of cloud computing are undeniable. The cost-efficacy, server consolidation, on-demand provisioning and geographic diversity that cloud computing offers represent just the beginning of the advantages that we’ll come to realize
by moving data into the cloud. SQL Azure combines the powerful performance and familiar environment of SQL Server with the benefits of cloud computing. It should fit in well as a solution for any organization looking to build a more dynamic, cost-effective data-management infrastructure.

About Author:

Apoorv Jain is Subject Matter Expert with Fujitsu Consulting India having close to 5.5 years of industry experience.In FCI Apoorv Jain is part of ITSG team and has worked across Several SQL Server technologies. Apoorv Jain holds a B.Tech degree in IT stream from T.C.T College, Bhopal M.P. Fujitsu Consulting India is Indian subsidiary of Fujitsu which is a leading Japanese information and communication technology (ICT) company, offering a full range of technology products, solutions and services.

Approximately 159,000 Fujitsu people support customers in more than 100 countries. FCI is first in India and second in the world to be awarded CMMI Services Level 5. Its integrated services and software portfolio includes Business Application Services (including ERP, CRM, AMS, BI, Mobility, Knowledge Management, Applications Packaging and Business Analytics- Rollouts, Upgrades and Implementation), Managed Infrastructure Services (Remote Infrastructure Management, System integration Services and Enduser Services) and Business Support Services.