Crossing Azure Borders

  • Comments posted to this topic are about the item Crossing Azure Borders

  • Unfortunately for me none of my recent clients have shown an interest in cloud based services. Whether it would meet their requirements is a different matter (perhaps not) but it has not given me the opportunity and, therefore, my own efforts on self-improvement have been mainly focused elsewhere.

    Gaz

    -- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!

  • Until the regulatory aspect of Azure is clarified internationally — namely, which bodies governmental or otherwise — have access to the data, I will continue to treat Azure as «open». I don't trust Microsoft with what they say about security and access, partly because of the regulatory structure in the U.S.

    So, if I am advising non-Leftpondian clients about any data that U.S. authorities may wish to get their grubby paws on, I will tell them bluntly that I cannot guarantee that the data in Azure is as safe as the data in their own hosted DB-server.

  • Sean Redmond (11/5/2015)


    Until the regulatory aspect of Azure is clarified internationally — namely, which bodies governmental or otherwise — have access to the data, I will continue to treat Azure as «open». I don't trust Microsoft with what they say about security and access, partly because of the regulatory structure in the U.S.

    So, if I am advising non-Leftpondian clients about any data that U.S. authorities may wish to get their grubby paws on, I will tell them bluntly that I cannot guarantee that the data in Azure is as safe as the data in their own hosted DB-server.

    Yes. Legal cases going through are expected to conclude shortly ([Individual] vs Facebook and NY vs Microsoft) although I expect it to drag on through appeals and higher courts.

    Gaz

    -- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!

  • We have a product that is entirely based in Azure. It is called Anytime Collect. (www.anytimecollect.com). It is a SAAS based Accounts Receivables Credit and Collections product. We sync data from a number of ERP Packages (Epicor, Sage 100/300/500, Great Plains, QuickBooks, etc.). The database is Azure SQL and a number of other services are hosted within the Azure framework.

  • I cannot guarantee that the data in Azure is as safe as the data in their own hosted DB-server.

    I totally agree.

  • trashncarry (11/5/2015)


    We have a product that is entirely based in Azure. It is called Anytime Collect. (www.anytimecollect.com). It is a SAAS based Accounts Receivables Credit and Collections product. We sync data from a number of ERP Packages (Epicor, Sage 100/300/500, Great Plains, QuickBooks, etc.). The database is Azure SQL and a number of other services are hosted within the Azure framework.

    Very cool. Do you shard a db per client? Do additional shards? One database?

  • Interesting topic, I just googled shard and that concept now has my head spinning. I am going to create a sample azure database to learn more about it.

    Thanks!

  • We use a combination of databases and servers. We have both single tenant and multi tenant db's on one server (about 21 db's for 320 customers) and we offer up to certain clients their own server. We don't scale across shards.

  • Thanks, interesting to hear. I assume performance works well for you since you have a lot of infrastructure there.

  • Steve Jones - SSC Editor (11/5/2015)


    Thanks, interesting to hear. I assume performance works well for you since you have a lot of infrastructure there.

    We haven't noticed any issues from the standpoint of the servers/databases as far as pressure on the "hardware"

    We have made a number of modifications to data views and procedures that have had dramatic increases in performance (as would be expected in any SQL Environment). I am sure it can be made better.

    We have several customers with a larger amount of data (some queries that return several 100k rows of data).

    We adopted Azure very early on, back with the old databases when it was first coming out. It is a constant learning curve. We have been using SQL Server for our products for the last 18 years or so, but Azure presents as a very different animal in almost all aspects.

    I personally have gained a ton of knowledge from SQLServerCentral.com and eagerly await the emails and articles.

  • trashncarry (11/5/2015)


    ...

    I personally have gained a ton of knowledge from SQLServerCentral.com and eagerly await the emails and articles.

    I'd like to get you more, but I've been struggling to find authors doing work on Azure that want to write. If you're interested, I'd be happy to help.

    We are looking for more people developing applications on Azure.

  • We created an entire SAAS application suite in Azure, and for the most part have been happy with the platform. We also migrated our existing on-premise applications to Azure as well. It has limitations that we continue to struggle with, but we have found workarounds to achieve what we need to do for the most part. We have been using it for about 3 years now, so we have got to feel a lot of growing pains along the way.

    We have a combination of Azure VM's running SQL Server (for legacy apps that we didn't want to or couldn't convert to Azure SQL), VM's for SSIS, VM's for SSRS and Azure SQL databases, in addition we have web roles, worker roles, blog storage, table storage, etc... We are currently looking to start using Azure Data Warehouse. I try to stay on top of the new features that are constantly being released, some are good, and others are just eh, not good. We still don't have a good replacement for SSIS or SQL Agent jobs, or being able to answer that question we always get "Why is the database slow?"

    We use a shared multi-tenant database architecture, so we don't have shards. We may need to use them due to size limitations as some point.

    As a long time SQL server DBA, I wasn't thrilled about the decision to start using Azure SQL database, but I've learned that it's not all the bad. I figure it's been a good experience learning the new technology and will only make me a better DBA. Lets face it cloud adaptation is only going to continue to grow.

  • I wish I could try it more, but AWS has such a strong offering and flexibility for my distributed processing needs.

    That and the fact I can spin up a entire cluster for distributed processing a single script controlled by a SSIS package. I don't know if Microsoft offers similar, but would be nice to know if that's possible through API's too.

  • xsevensinzx (11/6/2015)


    I wish I could try it more, but AWS has such a strong offering and flexibility for my distributed processing needs.

    That and the fact I can spin up a entire cluster for distributed processing a single script controlled by a SSIS package. I don't know if Microsoft offers similar, but would be nice to know if that's possible through API's too.

    I have not had a chance to work with it, but the Azure SQL Data Warehouse is suppose to be based on/using AWS.

    The more you are prepared, the less you need it.

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