>> Learn about things like fast restore,
geo-redundancy and on demand backups and how they work easily
in Azure database for
MySQL flexible server this week on Data Exposed.
[MUSIC].
>> Hi, I'm Anna Hoffman and
welcome to this episode of Data Exposed.
Today am joined by Aditi,
Product Manager working on MySQL flexible server.
Thanks so much for joining us today.
Can you tell us a little bit about what you do?
>> Sure. My name is Aditi Gupta and I'm
a Product Manager for Azure database for MySQL.
I've been at Microsoft for over three and a half years,
and while working in the open source landscape,
I've learned what goes for backup and
restore storage and migrations.
>> Awesome. Cool. It seems like you're
the right person to have on the show to tell us about
backing up and restoring your databases on
Azure database for MySQL flexible server.
Today we're going to be talking about some of the new things,
some of the existing things,
and you're going to be showing us
a lot of things I've never seen before,
so I'm really excited.
I think before we get into it, I wanted to ask you,
like you had mentioned something about
a fastest restore point to
me and I was just wondering what is that?
>> Essentially selecting a restore point for
your flexible server workload is a function of two activities.
Exiting from the full automated backup
and then the consequent transaction log replay.
Essentially a user to minimize or to optimizes
restore times would want to select a
time closer to these automated full backups.
But unfortunately these automated full backups were
under a cloak of invisibility and the users,
they were on an average selecting restore points,
which were running 12 hours
of being logged replay and leading to really,
really long restore times.
This was our need for speed moment and we decided that,
hey we really need to get
these automated full backups out of the cloak of
invisibility and put them out
in the limelight for the users to use.
What did that essentially was not only cut down the
restore times to one tenth of the original time,
but also give the users visibility into
the list of full available full automated backups,
so as to they could meet their audit or compliance needs.
That's essentially what a fastest response point is.
>> Okay, wow. That seems like huge improvements,
of course everyone wants to see the backups and then to
do it in a tenth of the time before it.
Awesome. I'd love to understand
how do you go about doing a fastest restore?
>> Absolutely. Let me take you to
the Azure portal and show you
how you can use this fastest restore point.
Essentially you land on the Azure portal
on your Azure database for MySQL flexible server.
Navigate to the backup and restore blade.
Once you do that, you'll start seeing what
essentially is Sherlock's memory palace,
where we are retaining
all your automated backups within the retention period.
You can go ahead and see all the automated backups which have been
taken within the retention period set for a flexible server,
the completion timestamp, the time till which it will be retained.
The good news is you can now start your
fastest restore right from this blade.
Selecting one of these,
you click on "Restore" and
you land up on the point in time restore
experience where you've pre-populated
the fastest restore point you've just selected from the blade.
The only thing that you have got to do now is enter
your server name and click
on "Review+Create" and you're good to go.
>> Wow. Okay. Not only is it a fast restore,
but it's fast to kick off the previous
yes. Awesome. That's pretty cool.
I love how simple it is to
use it and operate it, just makes sense.
One thing that comes up when we talk about backups,
you talk about restoring, a lot of times is disaster recovery.
Are there customers and if there are,
can you shed some light on how customers might use
some geo-redundancy to help protect them in disaster recovery?
>> Absolutely. In our bid to provide higher data resiliency,
in addition to
the existing locally redundant and zone redundant backup storage,
we have now provided the users the ability to select
geo-redundancy for the flexible server workloads.
What essentially it does is it takes a backup and stores in
the geo-paired region of
your primary region where
your orders from the flexible surveys is deployed.
You can now in case of a region down or a geographic disaster,
you can actually recover your flexible server by geo-restoring it
to the geo-paired region by using the server's latest backup.
We give you a recovery point objective often are.
Now let me just take you quickly to
the Azure portal and show you how you can actually configure
geo-redundancy and how you can
trigger geo-restores to dial up your disaster recovery plans.
In addition to any of
geo-redundancy right when you are creating a server,
you can also come to your locally redundant server.
Navigate to the compute storage plate and to the backup section
and just click on the
"Geo redundancy" checkbox and save your settings.
Once you've done this, you can come to the overview blade,
click on the "Restore" option.
In addition to the point in time restore options,
you now see the geo-redundant restart option
has been enabled for your server
and when selected it's
going to restore your server to the paired region.
In this case this is West US,
because my original server is in East US.
Again, the only thing that you need to self go ahead and
enter is the server name and hit on "review+ create".
>> Wow. Okay. That's pretty cool.
Also, again, pretty easy to set up.
Now you're you're geo-redundant are
protected against the whole region going down.
A lot of times something we see customers do is they do
these disaster recovery drills where they practice this.
How could you simulate this with this scenario?
>> Anna, just as a soccer team would
never head into their matches without practicing,
we can't expect an enterprise's first line of responders to handle
a critical failure in times of
an emergency situation without going through a simulation.
It's essentially important to run
disaster recovery drills to ensure
that the first line of responders know what to
do when they are stuck with the region failure scenario.
We've made this all easy for you,
and on the Azure database for MySQL flexible server page,
you can essentially go and stop your server,
which is going to mimic the scenario when
your region is down and your server is not working.
It now enable you to trigger geo-restores right from the
portal or even through
the command line interface for a start server.
This will not only help you benchmark your
geo-restores times in case a region is down,
but also give you a plan of action as to what to do on d-day.
>> Got it. I love that analogy.
Thanks for sharing that. It's a great way
to simulate that experience.
All right. One more question.
I know we've covered a lot today.
I wanted to understand a little
bit more about this thing I've heard
a little bit about called on demand back ups.
Can you tell me more about what that is?
>> On demand backups is an exciting feature and we
are essentially putting the ball back in the user's court.
Let me quickly take you to
the Azure portal experience for it and what it looks like.
We are essentially empowering the users to define
their own backup times and perform consequent restores.
You land on your flexible server and you navigate through
the backup and restart page and
you start seeing the backup now option.
Clicking on it is going to open the Trigger
on Demand Backup for your server experience.
Now, as uncle Ben's active Spider-Man with
great power comes great responsibility,
the sticker on the right reminds the user of
their responsibility of judicious use of this on demand backups.
Because we are essentially giving you a limit of 50
on demand backups or user initiated backups for a server.
The experience we auto populate the backup name.
The retention period for this backup
is a guardrail by what you've set at
the upper level for your flexible server
and essentially what you've got to do here is just come here,
see that you have enough left
and just click on the "Trigger" button.
Once the backup is successfully taken,
you will start seeing it listed in our Sherlock's memory palace.
Again, you can go ahead and perform
a quick restore action from these on demand backups.
This is giving user all the power to go ahead and define
their own backup times and perform restores.
>> Awesome. I love it. Yet again,
you have these great stories and analogies to bring it
and so that just makes it a lot better to understand.
Aditi thanks so much for coming on the show.
I learned personally so much about restores,
back ups, geo-redundancy,
and how easy it is to set this up, simulate it,
practice it and be more in
control and have more visibility than before.
I just want to thank you so much for coming on the show.
To our viewers, go ahead and like this video, if you liked it,
leave us a comment and let us know what you think about some of
these existing and new capabilities and check the description.
We'll put some links for you to learn more.
We hope to see you next time on Data Exposed.