How to upgrade from V11 to V12 SQL Azure?

Question

I am using V11 SQL Azure.

At this stage I do not want to upgrade my existing SQL server which contains all my current QA and Production DBs.

Logically it seems safer to create a new SQL Server setup for V12, then somehow copy/migrate the V11 DB instances from my V11 Sql Server to my new V12 SQL Server ie QA DBs to start with. I am aware of: V12 Upgrade article

Is this possible and how?

Answer 1

The easiest way to do this would be to create a new V12 server and then export the databases and import them into the new server.

There are a few ways to do this, you could either use the portal (https://manage.windowsazure.com) and click the database and click the Export button at the top, this will export the database to Azure Storage. To Import click New, Data Services, Import and select the bacpac file from your storage account and select the new V12 server to import it to.

Your other option is to download SSMS (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt238290.aspx) and login to both servers. Right click the database you want to export, and go to Tasks -> Export Data-tier Application. The select local storage to download the database locally. To Import, right click the Databases folder on your V12 server and go to Tasks -> Import Data-tier Application.

At this point this is the only straight forward way to go from V11 to V12 without upgrading your server directly.

Answer 2

We are needing to do the same thing for a production deployment of ~150 databases. Our strategy is similar: we have spun up a separate V12 instance for migration after we've assessed each database for the proper tier. However we have opted to upgrade the databases to the new tier within the V11 instance for a few weeks prior to migration to verify they are sized appropriately.

As far as migration, I don't know of any automatic or online way to do it. We've basically had to backup / restore the database via Azure storage using the portal or PowerShell scripts. There is unfortunately downtime for the customer during the time that the database is being copied. Also note that you will need to know prior to the import into the V12 server which new DB tier to use.

In a testing cycle we just did this past week, we migrated ~12 GB (8 databases) from a V11 server to a V12 server. Backing up the databases took around 1 hr 47 minutes, and then restoring the databases took 2 hr 24 minutes. So you get a rough benchmark of about 21 min/GB for the whole process, which is not real great if you have a lot of large databases. Fortunately for us most of our databases are small (<1 GB). If you have lots of larger databases, you may need to upgrade them within the V11 server (which is an online operation), and then upgrade the whole server (which is also online) to avoid downtime.