Keeping test Azure SQL DBs up to date with on-prem SQL

[jn19]

Hello everyone,

I’m working on a project to migrate our hosted IIS/.NET/SQL 2012 environment into Azure, and have already done most of the work towards getting the databases compatible with Azure SQL V12. My main area of concern right now is how to best perform and then automate the process of getting backups of our production databases restored into the corresponding Azure SQL DBs each night.

I’ve manually migrated a copy of the main database into Azure already, but I don’t know the best way to go about updating its data from the hosted SQL 2012 server on a regular schedule so that it’s not useless for testing purposes. I’d like to avoid doing a full restore each night, and I’m not sure if there’s a way to do this with only the change deltas. I'm sure there's a way with something like Azure Backup/ blob storage / Powershell, etc., but I haven't come across it yet.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[JaredBusch]

@jn19 The SQL Data Sync Agent is designed for this.

I use it at one client to sync a few tables up to Azure.

[jn19]

@JaredBusch Just what I was looking for. Thanks a lot, Jared!