Setup Always On Listener on Azure Virtual Machine

 Hi,

If you are looking to setup Always on Availability group listener on an Azure server and need a step by step guide, you can use below link my video.

In this video I have explained a step by step lab setup to configure the AG VMs, setting up the Load Balancer on Azure and making the required configuration changes on the Clustered VMs to create the Always on Availability Listener.

Hope you find it useful.

Configure AG Listener on Azure

How to solve Azure Site Recovery - Error ID 78007 Provider error 95103

While configuring Azure site recovery, one of the most common errors you might receive is Error ID - 78007. If you look at the error, you will find that Microsoft suggests the culprit is WMI or firewall. Error message should be "Connectivity failure- Mobility agent installation failed on the source machine.

In my case, I checked that none of these were issues, as I was able to telnet to port 443 from source to configuration server without issues, and all the exceptions on firewall were in place. Also the File and print sharing was enabled as Microsoft suggests, on my source machine.

If this is the case with you as well, read along and the error should be resolved in no time.

On your source server find and uninstall the Microsoft Azure Site Recovery Mobility Service/Master Target Server service.

While setting up your configuration server, If you have chosen the default installation path, go to C:\ProgramData\ASR\home\svsystems\pushinstallsvc\repository directory on your configuration server. This directory contains the mobility agent installation files for different types of source machine OS, which Microsoft supports.

In my case, the target was a windows machine. So I selected the latest Windows_GA release and copied to my source server. You have to select the release as per your source machine OS. Once copied, double click to start the installation.

You can choose the installation directory at next step. I left it to default and click next.

Installation will proceed and will go through pre-requisites, installation and configurations.

Once the installation is completed, proceed with configuration and provide the Configuration server IP address and the passphrase for your recovery service vault.

If you don't have the passphrase handy, you can use below command to generate passphrase on your configuration server.
cd %ProgramData%\ASR\home\svsystems\bin genpassphrase.exe -v > MobSvc.passphrase

Once completed, go back to the recovery service vault page on Azure portal and restart the replication job.

You should be able to see the replication agent running successfully now.

Hope you find the post helpful.

Migration path from on premise VM to Azure IAS VM

Hello Everyone,

In today's post we are going to elaborate on the ways, we can migrate the On-premise servers running SQL server to Azure VMs. The path basically depends on following few factors

1. The on-premise SQL version you are using.
2. The destination SQL version your application is targeting for.
3. The amount of downtime you can have during migration.
4. The size of the databases you have on-premises to migrate to Azure.
5. The license type you are going to use after migration.
6. The current HA/DR solution in place for On-premise databases.

Below excel file should help you figure out the best path for your migration. Let me know in comments if it is helpful or you would like some additions.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=14YKAlY98Az2-SsNiQ0zx4EfChET6Vld89LxaXulNE8s

Thanks and keep exploring 😊

Azure Managed Instances Procuring & Connecting

Azure Managed Instances

Procuring & Connecting

Below steps help you creating a new Azure Managed Instance from Azure portal and shows how to connect to it.

1. Create a new managed instance in Azure portal. Click on “Create a resource” and search for “Azure SQL Managed Instance”. In the result that appears. Click Create.

    2. Provide Instance Name, Login information, resource group, location and  Virtual Network to host managed instance. We are using below settings.

Resource Group - NaviDemoDBAInstance

Instance Name - navidemodbainstance

User Name - NaviSQLAdmin

Password - "Your Password"

Once all information is provided click create.

Create Managed Instance

           3. You will get a warning while creating a new VNet that First instance in the VNet could take upto 6 hours to complete.

       4.  Once the creation is in progress, you can click on the notification bell icon and choose to view the progress of the operation. Ours took 3 Hours and 37 Mins to complete.

               5. Create a new Virtual network for the VM you will connect your instance through. We are creating it in the same region “East US”.

               6. Create a new VM in the same resource group. Use the VNet “MyJumpVMVNet” for this Virtual machine. We opened the RDP ports to this machine.

Machine Name – MgdInstJumpVM

User Name – NaviSQLAdmin

Password - "Your password"

Below is the configurations of the VM created.

             7. Once done create a peering between the VM Vnet and Managed Instance VNet. Below are the 2 networks we will peer.

             8. Go to “Peerings” section of one of the network and click “Add”.

         9. On the blade that opens up, specify a name for peering and select the other Virtual network. In our case it is the Managed instance network selected.

               10. Once created you should have the peering visible on your VM Network

               11. Now go to the Managed instance Virtual network and create peering towards your VM Virtual network as we did before in other direction.

               12. Now Connect to your VM created earlier. You can download the RDP file from the portal for connection. Use the credentials provided while creation of VM.

          13. Once logged in Open Internet explorer and download the latest version of SQL Server Management Studio. We will use this for testing connectivity between VM and our Managed Instance.

                14. Once downloaded Start the setup and install it on your Azure VM

                15. Now go to you managed instance on azure portal and copy the complete Instance name. Instance name should be like “MyInstancename.3ed349523e65.database.windows.net”

                16. Go to your VM, Open SQL Server Management Studio and paste the server name and login information as below

                17. You should be able to connect to your instance now. By default the version you will receive would be SQL Server 2014 RTM (12.0.2000.8).

Hope you find the steps helpful and easy to follow.

Migrate On premise physical machines to Azure using Azure Site Recovery

Hello Everyone,

Below video shows the detailed step by step method to migrate an On-premise Physical server to Azure using Azure site recovery.

I have used 2 physical servers: 1 as Configuration server and other one as the Source server for migration. You will see detailed steps to configure everything from start till end. It also shows a test fail over to Azure and how to connect to the migrated server.

Due to some technical difficulties, the video doesn't has audio. But I hope you will find this useful as it is a complete step by step from start till end.