>> The SQL Server IaaS extension is going to allow you to get
more Azure benefits out of
your SQL running in Azure Virtual Machines.
Learn more on this episode of Data Exposed.
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>> Hi, I'm Anna Hoffman and
welcome to this episode of Data Exposed.
Today, I'm joined by Pam Lahoud,
a Program Manager on Azure Data team.
Pam, Thanks so much for joining us today.
>> Hi Anna. I'm happy to be here.
>> Awesome. We are happy to have you here.
Today we're going to be talking about
the SQL Server IaaS extension.
I'd love to just kick it off by asking you
what is the SQL Server IaaS extension?
>> Sure. The SQL Server IaaS extension is a
free add-on service that you get
when you're running SQL Server in a virtual machine in Azure.
The idea behind the extension is to give you
some value add services if you
decide to run your SQL server in an Azure VM.
Some of the same experiences that you would get if you were in
a full PaaS service like
Azure SQL DB or Azure SQL Managed Instance,
we want to give you a little bit of that Azure goodness,
even if you're managing your own SQL Server.
>> Cool. That seems like a pretty good thing.
Can you tell us a little bit more
about why people would want to enable it?
What is that Azure goodness you're talking about?
>> Sure. Absolutely. Why don't we go over to the demo
because it's probably easier if I show you about it.
>> That would be great.
>> Yeah. What I have up here is
my Azure Portal and I'm looking at some of my virtual machines.
If you're running virtual machines where
you've self-installed SQL Server.
This may be the only view of Azure Virtual Machines that you know.
You can see I have two virtual machines here.
If I were to click on one of these virtual machines,
I can manage them in the regular virtual machine blade.
The virtual machine blade will give me access
to things like networking and
disks and the size of the VM and
CPU and it shows me all the stuff about the VM itself.
But you'll notice there's nothing here that's SQL specific.
There's no way to manage anything related to SQL Server
in the virtual machine because we
don't know that it's running SQL.
Let me go back to the virtual machine blade here.
I can show you,
of course, that changes my resource group there.
Let me just go back to just my VMs. There's my two VMs.
Now if I choose this one the FULLRP,
I'm going to open this in a new tab this time so
I learned my lesson about the view.
This is going to bring up one
of my virtual machines where I actually
have the IaaS agent extension installed.
There will be a slight difference for this virtual machine.
If I scroll down in the Window here,
you'll notice there's an additional button
here for SQL Server configuration.
If I click this,
this allows me to switch over to the SQL virtual machine blade.
The SQL virtual machine blade is what you get.
The SQL virtual machine resource
comes with the SQL IaaS agent extension.
When you install the SQL IaaS agent extension,
then you get this additional blade that
allows you to manage SQL Server specific services.
Here, you can see I have
the ability to look at some configurations.
I can change things like licensing.
In this case, this is an Azure Hybrid Benefit virtual machine,
which means I'm leveraging
my on-prem software assurance licenses in Azure,
so I'm able to use
my existing investments to
lower my costs in Azure so I can change my licensing.
If I want to go back to pay as you go or the HA/DR
licensed type which allows you to run a passive secondary,
like for example, an availability group.
With a secondary machine that's passive I can give
a free HA/DR license if I have Azure Hybrid Benefit.
I can change all of that here.
The storage configuration,
after the VM is deployed,
there are a few things I can do using
the storage configuration like extending the drives.
Also, a new feature that we're excited about is the integration of
Security Center and the vulnerability assessment
directly in the SQL virtual machine blade.
This is cool because it can be sometimes challenging when you
have the Azure Defender installed and you
have the vulnerability assessment for VM.
It can sometimes be challenging to find the recommendations
that apply to your specific VM
when you go directly to Security Center.
Here, we'll be able to see all of
the vulnerability assessment recommendations
and rules that have fired.
You can see all of that directly in the SQL virtual machine blade.
It's a one-stop shop for managing your SQL VM.
>> Definitely, it's really cool.
It seems like there are a lot of things there.
There are also some things you didn't click on that
also seem very interesting.
One other question I have maybe is more
general I'll just make sure myself and the viewers understand.
This is the SQL IaaS extension.
This is something you have to go like install,
how do you set this up,
and do you have to set it up for all your SQL virtual machine,
or is there like a way to think about what needs it?
>> Yeah, so that's a really great question.
To me, one of the primary benefits
of the extension is discoverability.
A lot of times especially if you have a large company,
a large enterprise organization,
you may not even know all the VMs that you have.
If you come over here to the SQL virtual machines blade,
you'll see only one of MySQL VMs is listed
here and that's because the other one doesn't have the extension.
What I can do is there's a button here
called Automatic SQL Server VM registration.
What this does is it pops up a EULA,
a little agreement that you just agreed to that says,
if I click "Accept" here and I click "Register",
then I want to automatically discover
all of the virtual machines that are running SQL Server.
This way, you'll have
a single pane of glass where you can view everything.
This is the quickest and easiest way to get
the IaaS extension on
all of your Azure VMs and all of your SQL VMs.
>> It'll install it for you.
>> Yeah, we will install it for you and
that's for all current VMs and future VMs.
If in the future you spin up a VM and you manually install
SQL Server a day or two after that VM comes online,
we'll go ahead and install the extension for you. In that way,
you'll have one place to manage everything for that subscription.
I mean, you can manually install it.
This is probably a little bit small,
so let me zoom here.
I have an Azure CLI command here up.
This is one way to manually install the extension.
That other VM where I don't have the extension installed,
I can go ahead and run
this command and then this will
go and install the extension,
and then eventually it'll show up.
It takes a little bit of time,
so it might not show up in time before our video is done here,
but I'll just let that kick in the background.
You can also manually
install it if you just want to do one or two.
But I highly recommend
this automatic registration quickest and easiest way.
>> Yeah. I was not aware of that.
Seems like the obvious just to do
that one button and there you go.
>> That's the easy button and we call it the easy button.
>> I love it, cool.
This is really useful to learn a lot
about the SQL IaaS extension.
Another question I have for you is,
if I'm a customer and I have SQL VMs,
but I also have SQL Managed Instances,
and I have SQL Databases,
maybe some elastic pools,
are there any benefits now that I have
this SQL IaaS extension
for seeing all those things
or managing all those things together.
>> Yeah, that's a really great question.
Let's go back to the demo and I can show you.
I'm here on my virtual machine blade,
let me just go home and you can go to Azure SQL.
SQL VM is part of the Azure SQL family.
The Azure SQL family includes all of your SQL virtual machines,
your Managed Instances, and your SQL Databases.
When you have the IaaS extension installed,
you can use this Azure SQL View to see
all of your Azure SQL whether it's PaaS,
IaaS, anything you have here,
and you can see information about all of those instances here.
This is particularly good if you're
using Azure Hybrid Benefit, because you can
apply those Azure Hybrid Benefits to PaaS services as well.
This is a nice way to see
just how many instances of Azure SQL you have out there.
>> Cool, awesome. This is a great view.
I think most people should go ahead and just
pin that Azure SQL view.
>> That's what I do.
>> Me too. Pam, this has been so useful.
I've learned a lot, I love how succinct you've
been in teaching us about the SQL IaaS extension.
For our viewers who are maybe
new to this, we're just getting started.
Do you have any final advice or tips and
tricks on how to use that SQL IaaS extension?
>> I would just say try it out.
It's a no-brainer. It's a free service.
You get all of these extra value adds.
There's a lot of stuff that we didn't talk about,
things like automated backups,
automated security patching,
and we've got new features coming all the time.
We are working very hard to implement all kinds of different value
add features that just make it quick
and easy to manage your SQL VM.
I highly recommend you opt into this
and take a look at the features we have available today,
and then keep an eye out for what's coming in the future.
>> That's awesome. Thanks so much Pam.
I think it sounds like we're going to get closer to adding
PaaS-like capabilities to IaaS which is cool
for a lot of people who still want that extra control.
>> You call it IaaS plus plus.
>> IaaS plus plus, love it.
Awesome. Thanks so much Pam for coming on this show.
For our viewers thanks for watching.
In the description, we're going to put some links so you can
learn more about the SQL IaaS extension,
how to get it setup, and how to get the most out of it.
With that, we hope to see you next time on Data Exposed.
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