SQL Azure Backup
The Enzo Backup for SQL Azure solution offers unprecedented flexibility by allowing you
to backup a SQL Azure database and restore the backup to other SQL Azure databases or on premise SQL Server databases.
You can also schedule backup jobs!
Uses
- Prevent data loss of your SQL Azure databases by performing full backups
- Recover from unintentional data loss (truncated tables...)
- Migrate Azure-ready SQL Server databases in SQL Azure
- Backup customer databases that use schema separation (multitenant SaaS model)
Features
With the Enzo Backup for SQL Azure, you can:
- Create a backup blob, or a backup file from a SQL Azure database
- Restore a SQL Azure database from a backup blob, or a backup file
- Perform limited backup and restore of SQL Server databases (see details)
- Run backups entirely in the cloud using a cloud agent
- Backup a single schema of a database
- Restore specific tables only
- Copy backup devices from on-premise to the cloud, and back
- Use a command-line utility to perform backup and restore operations
- Perform transactionally consistent backups for SQL Azure
- Schedule backup Jobs to run in the cloud
- Send SMTP Alerts to to your email or phone (advanced edition only)
Editions
Enzo Backup for SQL Azure comes in two editions:
Standard and Advanced. While the Standard edition allows you to perform
most the functions of the Advanced edition, the Advanced edition will perform the backup and restore operations much faster
since it is designed to leverage multiple CPUs on a machine. The Standard edition is recommended for small
databases (less than 500 MB) while the Advanced edition is recommended for larger databases. In addition, the advanced
edition allows you to create alerts when backup/restore operations complete.
Details
The Enzo Backup for SQL Azure works as a local windows application allowing you to issue backup and restore
requests for your SQL Azure databases. You can backup and restore from Blob storage or from your local file system.
Backup files are compressed and contain both schema and data of a database.
Backing up a SQL Server database is only supported if the database was initially restored from a SQL Azure database.
For example tables without a Primary Key will not be backed up. This feature allows developers to backup a SQL Azure
database and restore it on premise using SQL Server to work on it. Once the work completed, developers can backup
the updated database from SQL Server and restore it back into SQL Azure.
The backup tool will also allow backing up a single schema, as opposed to an
entire database. This is useful for sharding and multitenant scenarios in which a single database hosts multiple customers, each with its own schema.
As such, backup files can be created for a single customer.
A command-line utility can be used to execute backup operations through a
third-party scheduler. The command-line utility
supports all the options offered through the user interface.
Enzo Backup also offers a built-in scheduler allowing to schedule one-time or recurring backup operations. The jobs
are designed to run entirely in the cloud.
The product uses highly sophisticated backup and restore techniques to avoid transient errors and typical network
latency issues. Lab tests show that a 50MB database can be backed up in 2 minutes and restored in 3 minutes.
The product will backup many object types, including tables, triggers, stored procedures, views, functions, spatial data types,
spatial indexes, constraints and foreign keys, user-defined types, user-defined statistics and more.
For more information, download the Technical Details document.
Limitations
While User Defined Types are supported, the product does not restore Table-Type Constraints. However user-table constraints are
fully supported.
In this release the product does not offer differential backup support. This is planned for a future release.
Support
You can obtain assistance with configuration and general support by email.