Microsoft releases some significant updates to Windows Azure

This morning we released some significant updates to Windows Http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/13357.html ">azure." These new features include:

SQL Server support: Windows Azure virtual machines support general availability (including high availability and disaster recovery) Notification Center: The general availability version of Windows Azure Notification Center (Windows 8, Windows Phone, iOS and Android broadcast push) Autoscale: Autoscale rules based on planning and richer logging support for virtual machines: Load balancer configuration and Management services: New portal extensions to operational logs and Alerts

All of these improvements are now available immediately (note: The automatic calibration is still in the preview and everything else is generally available). Here are the details about them.

Windows Azure virtual machine supports SQL Server AlwaysOn

I am pleased to announce that Windows Azure supports the general availability version of the SQL Server AlwaysOn availability Group. We have updated the official file to support the availability Group listener for SQL Server2012 (or later) on Windows Server2012.

Support for the SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability Group, introduced in SQL Server 2012, is the primary solution for Microsoft to achieve high availability and disaster recovery with SQL Server. The SQL Server AlwaysOn availability group supports multiple database failover, multiple replicas (5 in SQL Server2012, 9 in SQL Server 2014), readable secondary copy (can be used to unload reports and BI applications), configurable failover policies, Backup auxiliary copies for easy monitoring.

Today, we are pleased to announce that we support the full SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability group technology tier by using Windows Azure virtual machines, including the availability group listeners that support SQL Server. We're really happy to be the first cloud service provider with full support for the SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability Group, which we believe will provide a lot of new usage scenarios for our customers.

SQL Server high availability running in virtual machines

You can now use SQL Server AlwaysOn on Windows Azure virtual machines to achieve high availability and global business continuity. As part of this support, you can now deploy one or more secondary copies of a readable database, which not only increases the availability of your SQL Server, but also increases your productivity, allowing you to uninstall the BI reporting tasks and back up to the secondary computer.

Today's Windows Azure Publishing includes changes to Windows Azure Network load balancers to better support the AlwaysOn capabilities of SQL Servers. Today's update, you can now connect to your SQL Server deployment environment with a single client connection string (using the Availability Group listener endpoint). This automatically routes the database to the primary replica node – and our Network load balancer automatically updates the routing request to the secondary replica node in an automatic or manual failover scenario:

This new SQL Server Availability Group listener support allows you to easily deploy a highly available SQL database for your Windows Azure virtual machine and take advantage of the full set of SQL Server features. It also ensures that there is no downtime during upgrade operations or patching virtual machines.

Disaster recovery with Windows Azure for local SQL Server

In addition to enabling a high-availability solution on Windows Azure, new SQL Server AlwaysOn support can extend the local SQL Server solution to one or more secondary copies running in the cloud using Windows Azure virtual machines. This enables companies to use high-availability disaster recovery scenarios – when local data centers are shut down (for example, due to hurricanes or natural disasters, or simple local network hardware failures), they can failover and continue using Windows Azure operations to use virtual machines deployed in the cloud.

The figure above shows that a local SQL Server AlwaysOn availability Group has defined 2 database replicas – Primary and secondary (S1). Another auxiliary copy (S2) is configured to run in the cloud in a Windows Azure virtual machine. This auxiliary copy (S2) will continue to synchronize data with the primary replica of the internal deployment. In a local disaster event, the company can failover, switch to a copy of the cloud, and continue to operate without impacting the business.

In addition to using disaster recovery, secondary replicas can be used to uninstall reporting applications and backups. This is valuable because the company needs to maintain the number of backups outside the data center for compatibility reasons, enabling customers to take full advantage of computing scenarios even in a non-disaster scenario replica.

Visit Windows Azure For more information about SQL Server AlwaysOn support

You can learn more about how to enable SQL Server AlwaysOn support on Windows Azure by reading high availability and disaster recovery documentation for SQL Server on Windows Azure virtual machines. You can also view this TechEd2013 presentation: SQL Server high availability and disaster recovery on the Windows Azure Wm. We are really happy to be the first cloud provider to support a full range of SQL Server AlwaysOn scenarios that we believe will provide customers with a great deal of new usage scenarios.