I am trying to upgrade an Azure DB in a continuous release scenario. The DB lives in SQL Azure and its size keeps growing. Now it's about > 50G. In my previous on-premise experience, I usually backup the old DB in a compressed format and save it to an on-premise file sever. In case the upgrade fail, I can restore it safely.
But with SQL Azure, I am not sure if it's OK to download such a big DB from SQL Azure. And is there any best practice for the SQL Azure DB upgrade scenario?
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I found this link regarding different SQL Azure backup strategies. But it'll be great if someone can share some field experiences.
Azure now has automatic exports (aka full backups) to blob storage that you can schedule. The .bacpac files are complete compressed copies of your database and blob storage is pretty cheap. To give you an idea of size we have a 20GB database that is backed up to only 500 MB. We typically keep 14 days of backups but how long to retain them is up to your needs.
It's kind of like the Ron Popeil Rotisserie. You just set it, and forget it.
Obviously after you take a backup you want to restore it somewhere else to verify it worked. It's also a good idea to periodically restore your backups to make sure they working over time. You can do all of this in the Azure Portal. Just create a new database based on a .bacpac file that you created from the automated export.
You actually don't have to download the DB on premise unless you want another copy locally. Because if you are using geo-redundant blob storage its already copied to another region and you have 6 copies in total. But again its up to you.
When you log into the management portal navigate to the Sql Database tab. Click on your DB and then click configure. There you can set up automated backups for your db to blob storage.
The path on the management portal looks like this:
https://manage.windowsazure.com/mycompany.com#Workspaces/SqlAzureExtension/SqlServer/coolazuredb/Database/5.coolazuredb/Config
Here is a screenshot of the automated export section: