Creating SQL Server on Azure Cloud

Today i created an SQL Server Database on Azure cloud, Now a days many organisations are increasingly moving to cloud on various databases. I thought of trying SQL Server today and am still exploring all the options provided in azure for SQL server.

I captured some screenshots for the same and can outline the process:

In azure portal go to Databases and click on SQL Servers, the click create.

  

     The below screen will appear, Provide the resource group, Database Name and Server name. To create a server click on Create new and a new screen will appear 

In this screen provide server-name,username,password,location 

            

 You will need to check storage/compute option, do click and check how many DTU's and Disk space is required since you will be charged for the same. I chose a basic one for my testing 

Once done next page will be to validate network connectivity, i clicked on public endpoint to allow my machine to access the database (this, myip needs to be configured in firewall setting as well) 

Next step is Data source - if you want to create a blank, sample database or import from an existing one. i chose to create sample DB.

At the end click review and create and the deployment will take place, this takes a few minutes.

Once Done we can connect to your database using query editor and giving username/password that was given during DB Creation.

Mounting azure file share on your linux/unix machine

So once you create file share in azure, and need to access from linux server how to do that?

In azure portal , click on the file share and you will get an option named - Connect

Go to linux VM , you will see a script that needs to be run on azure linux vm to mount the fileshare.  

In my case i ran the script on my azure vm and file share got mounted without any issues.

Filesystem syntax will be in the form of :

//yourstorageaccount.file.core.windows.net/filesharename

Azure Storage - Containers,blobs,file shares

Microsoft Azure Cloud can store data in a storage account, once a storage account is created we get different options to store data:

1. Containers for blob storage - Blob storage is designed for storing unstructured data , designed mainly for images, or documents directly from browser , video, audio,storing data for backups and recovery etc..

To create blobs, click on container and you will can add new container to hold blob data along with access level

aws s3 command to list and copy files from and to AWS s3 Bucket

AWS S3 command is used to copy data from AWS bucket to a location - say a mountpoint on unix 

box or vice-versa or buckets

This command is similar to Unix cp command. I used aws s3 ls and aws s3 cp to copy files from S3 bucket sometime back.

buckets to a mount point in the server. 

Below are some examples and syntax for the same:

1. List directories and files :

 aws s3 ls s3://path/file 

ls command with list objects and common prefixes under a specified bucket and prefix.

2. List content in a directory:

aws s3 ls s3://path/directory --recursive 

with above command all contents in directory are listed.

3. Copy files from S3 bucket to a mount point :

aws s3 cp://file path /tmp

in above command aws s3 copy command copies a file from S3 bucket to a local mountpoint /tmp

4. Copy files from mount point to s3 bucket:

aws s3 cp /tmp/file1.txt s3://path/fil1,txt

5. Delete files in bucket :

aws s3 rm s3://path/file1.txt

6. Display file with file size in human readable format:

aws s3 ls  s3://path --recursive --human-readable --summarize

Mariabackup for taking backup of mariadb databases

Today i have taken backup using mariabackup, with this utility you can take online full and incremental backups.

Below are the steps to be followed:

1. Create user as for backup:

MariaDB [(none)] > Create user 'mariabackup'@'localhost' identified by 'password';

MariaDB [(none)] > Grant reload,process,lock tables, replication client on *.* to 'mariabackup'@'localhost';

2. Install Maria backup:

#yum install MariaDB-backup

you will observe packages being installed and at the end will get message Complete !

3. Create a directory for backups, in my case i created /backup

4. take backups :

   #mariabackup --backup --target-dir=/backup --user=mariabackup --password=password

Backup will start and at the end you will get a message completed OK !

now we can go to the directory and check files created, you will see multiple files along with DB files that have backup related info -

backup-my.cnf,  xtrabackup_info, xtrabackup_checkpoints 

Mariadb Installation on Centos7

I recently installed Mariadb10.0 on Centos , this was on Azure. To start with i have created a VM on AZURE with centos and post Completion installed Mariadb.

Installing mariadb is fairly simple and below are the steps to be followed..:

1. Enable Mariadb Repository , create a file /etc/yum.repos.d/MariaDB.repo and add:

      name = MariaDB

    baseurl = http://yum.mariadb.org/10.4/centos7-amd64

    gpgkey=https://yum.mariadb.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-MariaDB

    gpgcheck=1

2. Next step is to install MariaDB server and Client packages , use yum:

     # yum install Mariadb-Server MariaDB-Client 

    this will download the required packages and complete the installation. Galera packages are also installed as it comes bundled in this version.

3. Start Mariadb :

    # Systemctl start Mariadb

    # Systemctl status Mariadb

At this point Mariadb should be up and running. Configuration file can be found in /etc/mariadb.d/server.cnf and default directory 

is in /var/lib/mysql.

With Mariadb 10.4 you can login to database without root password:

  #mysql -uroot

  Mariadb>