DP-300 Exam Dumps - Administering Relational Databases on Microsoft Azure

Scenario: Business Requirements

Litware identifies business requirements include: meet an SLA of 99.99% availability for all Azure deployments.

Box 1: Cloud witness

If you have a Failover Cluster deployment, where all nodes can reach the internet (by extension of Azure), it is recommended that you configure a Cloud Witness as your quorum witness resource.

Box 2: Azure Basic Load Balancer

Microsoft guarantees that a Load Balanced Endpoint using Azure Standard Load Balancer, serving two or more Healthy Virtual Machine Instances, will be available 99.99% of the time.

Note: There are two main options for setting up your listener: external (public) or internal. The external (public) listener uses an internet facing load balancer and is associated with a public Virtual IP (VIP) that is accessible over the internet. An internal listener uses an internal load balancer and only supports clients within the same Virtual Network.

Scenario: Authenticate database users by using Active Directory credentials.

(Create a new Azure SQL database named ResearchDB1 on a logical server named ResearchSrv01.)

Authenticate the user in SQL Database or SQL Data Warehouse based on an Azure Active Directory user:

CREATE USER [Fritz@contoso.com] FROM EXTERNAL PROVIDER;

To configure a disaster recovery solution for db1, you can use the failover groups feature of Azure SQL Database. Failover groups allow you to manage the replication and failover of a group of databases across different regions with the same connection strings1. You can also use active geo-replication as an alternative, but you will need to update the connection strings manually after a failover2.

Here are the steps to create a failover group for db1 with the secondary server in the West US 3 region:

Using the Azure portal:

Go to the Azure portal and select your Azure SQL Database server that hosts db1.

Select Failover groups in the left menu and click on Add group.

Enter a name for the failover group and select West US 3 as the secondary region.

Click on Create a new server and enter the details for the secondary server, such as server name, admin login, password, and subscription.

Click on Select existing database(s) and choose db1 from the list of databases on the primary server.

Click on Configure failover policy and select the failover mode, grace period, and read-write failover endpoint mode according to your preferences.

Click on Create to create the failover group and start the replication of db1 to the secondary server.

Using PowerShell commands:

Install the Azure PowerShell module and log in with your Azure account.

Run the following command to create a new server in the West US 3 region: New-AzSqlServer -ResourceGroupName -ServerName -Location "West US 3" -SqlAdministratorCredentials $(New-Object -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -ArgumentList "", $(ConvertTo-SecureString -String "" -AsPlainText -Force))

Run the following command to create a new failover group with db1: New-AzSqlDatabaseFailoverGroup -ResourceGroupName -ServerName -PartnerResourceGroupName -PartnerServerName -FailoverGroupName -Database db1 -FailoverPolicy Manual -GracePeriodWithDataLossHours 1 -ReadWriteFailoverEndpoint "Enabled"

You can modify the parameters of the command according to your preferences, such as the failover policy, grace period, and read-write failover endpoint mode.

These are the steps to create a failover group for db1 with the secondary server in the West US 3 region.

To ensure that any enhancements made to the Query Optimizer through patches are available to dbl and db2 on sql37006895, you need to enable the query optimizer hotfixes option for each database. This option allows you to use the latest query optimization improvements that are not enabled by default1. You can enable this option by using the ALTER DATABASE SCOPED CONFIGURATION statement2.

Here are the steps to enable the query optimizer hotfixes option for dbl and db2 on sql37006895:

Connect to sql37006895 using SQL Server Management Studio, Azure Data Studio, or any other tool that supports Transact-SQL statements.

Open a new query window and run the following commands for each database:

-- Switch to the database context

USE dbl;

GO

-- Enable the query optimizer hotfixes option

ALTER DATABASE SCOPED CONFIGURATION SET QUERY_OPTIMIZER_HOTFIXES = ON;

GO

Repeat the same commands for db2, replacing dbl with db2 in the USE statement.

To verify that the query optimizer hotfixes option is enabled for each database, you can query the sys.database_scoped_configurations catalog view. The value of the query_optimizer_hotfixes column should be 1 for both databases.

These are the steps to enable the query optimizer hotfixes option for dbl and db2 on sql37006895.

To ensure that all queries executed against dbl are captured in the Query Store, you need to enable the Query Store feature for the database and set the query capture mode to ALL. The Query Store feature provides you with insight on query plan choice and performance for Azure SQL Database1. The query capture mode controls whether all queries or only a subset of queries are tracked2.

Here are the steps to enable the Query Store and set the query capture mode to ALL for the database dbl:

Using the Azure portal:

Go to the Azure portal and select your Azure SQL Database server.

Select the database dbl and click on Query Performance Insight in the left menu.

Click on Configure Query Store and turn on the Query Store switch.

In the Query Capture Mode dropdown, select All and click on Save.

Using Transact-SQL statements:

Connect to the Azure SQL Database server and the database dbl using SQL Server Management Studio or Azure Data Studio.

Run the following command to enable the Query Store for the database: ALTER DATABASE dbl SET QUERY_STORE = ON;

Run the following command to set the query capture mode to ALL for the database: ALTER DATABASE dbl SET QUERY_STORE (QUERY_CAPTURE_MODE = ALL);

These are the steps to ensure that all queries executed against dbl are captured in the Query Store.

To enable change data capture (CDC) for db1, you need to run the stored procedure sys.sp_cdc_enable_db in the database context. CDC is a feature that records activity on a database when tables and rows have been modified1. CDC can be used for various scenarios, such as data synchronization, auditing, or ETL processes2.

Here are the steps to enable CDC for db1:

Connect to db1 using SQL Server Management Studio, Azure Data Studio, or any other tool that supports Transact-SQL statements.

Open a new query window and run the following command: EXEC sys.sp_cdc_enable_db; GO

This command will enable CDC for the database and create the cdc schema, cdc user, metadata tables, and other system objects for the database3.

To verify that CDC is enabled for db1, you can query the is_cdc_enabled column in the sys.databases catalog view. The value should be 1 for db1.

These are the steps to enable CDC for db1

To enable page compression on the PK_SalesOrderHeader_SalesOrderlD clustered index of the SalesLT.SalesOrderHeader table in db1, you can use the following Transact-SQL script:

-- Connect to the Azure SQL database named db1

USE db1;

GO

-- Enable page compression on the clustered index

ALTER INDEX PK_SalesOrderHeader_SalesOrderlD ON SalesLT.SalesOrderHeader

REBUILD WITH (DATA_COMPRESSION = PAGE);

GO

This script will rebuild the clustered index with page compression, which can reduce the storage space and improve the query performance

The script solution consists of three parts:

The first part is USE db1; GO. This part connects to the Azure SQL database named db1, where the SalesLT.SalesOrderHeader table is located. The GO command separates the batches of Transact-SQL statements and sends them to the server.

The second part is ALTER INDEX PK_SalesOrderHeader_SalesOrderlD ON SalesLT.SalesOrderHeader REBUILD WITH (DATA_COMPRESSION = PAGE); GO. This part enables page compression on the clustered index named PK_SalesOrderHeader_SalesOrderlD, which is defined on the SalesLT.SalesOrderHeader table. The ALTER INDEX statement modifies the properties of an existing index. The REBUILD option rebuilds the index from scratch, which is required to change the compression setting. The DATA_COMPRESSION = PAGE option specifies that page compression is applied to the index, which means that both row and prefix compression are used. Page compression can reduce the storage space and improve the query performance by compressing the data at the page level. The GO command ends the batch of statements.

The third part is optional, but it can be useful to verify the compression status of the index. It is SELECT name, index_id, data_compression_desc FROM sys.indexes WHERE object_id = OBJECT_ID('SalesLT.SalesOrderHeader');. This part queries the sys.indexes catalog view, which contains information about the indexes in the database. The SELECT statement returns the name, index_id, and data_compression_desc columns for the indexes that belong to the SalesLT.SalesOrderHeader table. The OBJECT_ID function returns the object identification number for the table name. The data_compression_desc column shows the compression type of the index, which should be PAGE for the clustered index after the script is executed.

These are the steps of the script solution for enabling page compression on the clustered index of the SalesLT.SalesOrderHeader table in db1.

To configure high availability for dbl, you can use the failover groups feature of Azure SQL Database. Failover groups allow you to manage the replication and failover of a group of databases across different regions with the same connection strings1. You can choose all, or a subset of, user databases in a logical server to be replicated to another logical server in a different region. You can also specify the failover policy, such as manual or automatic, and the grace period for data loss.

Here are the steps to create a failover group for dbl:

Using the Azure portal:

Go to the Azure portal and select your Azure SQL Database server that hosts dbl.

Select Failover groups in the left menu and click on Add group.

Enter a name for the failover group and select a secondary region that is different from the primary region.

Click on Create a new server and enter the details for the secondary server, such as server name, admin login, password, and subscription.

Click on Select existing database(s) and choose dbl from the list of databases on the primary server.

Click on Configure failover policy and select the failover mode, grace period, and read-write failover endpoint mode according to your preferences.

Click on Create to create the failover group and start the replication of dbl to the secondary server.

Using PowerShell commands:

Install the Azure PowerShell module and log in with your Azure account.

Run the following command to create a new server in the secondary region: New-AzSqlServer -ResourceGroupName -ServerName -Location "" -SqlAdministratorCredentials $(New-Object -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -ArgumentList "", $(ConvertTo-SecureString -String "" -AsPlainText -Force))

Run the following command to create a new failover group with dbl: New-AzSqlDatabaseFailoverGroup -ResourceGroupName -ServerName -PartnerResourceGroupName -PartnerServerName -FailoverGroupName -Database dbl -FailoverPolicy -GracePeriodWithDataLossHours -ReadWriteFailoverEndpoint ""

You can modify the parameters of the command according to your preferences, such as the failover policy, grace period, and read-write failover endpoint mode.

These are the steps to create a failover group for dbl