Setting up your cost-effective Azure Database Environment (1)

Chapter 1

Problem Statement

Cloud computing is fundamentally changing IT and transforming businesses at an unprecedented pace. Companies are rapidly turning to the cloud for the opportunities it brings – increased agility, faster innovation, and efficient operations, just to name a few.

Azure gives you a flexible migration path with hybrid consistency across your on-premises assets and the cloud. You don’t have to move everything all at once. Whether your business requires a hybrid state long-term or only during the migration period, Azure is hybrid by design and can support your needs.

This project aims to document and describe to the readers how to set up their own Azure Data Warehouse Cloud solution. I will be posting a series of articles each separated into different chapters but related to each other.

Chapter 2 will describe all of the resources needed in our cloud environment. Each resource will have its setup sub-article.

Chapter 3 will outline the migration of a SQL Server Database to an Azure SQL Database. The chapter will also cover how to do analysis and to check the database compatibility with the cloud. It would also cover migrating your schema and data to the cloud – challenges, and methods.

Chapter 4 is all about automation. It will cover setting up an Automation Account and a Data Factory. There will be sub-articles to Chapter 5 for creating a couple of Runbooks and SSIS packages. This Chapter aims to compare the cost of using an Automation Account and a data Factory.

Chapter 5 will cover creating your first SSAS Tabular Model and hosting it in Azure. The chapter goes deeper into how you can apply Row Level Security to your model and report.

Chapter 6 is all about Power BI. I will be creating a sample report from our Azure Data Warehouse. The report will be using the AAS Tabular model as a data source. I’ll also try to build the same model in Power BI and compare the differences between using AAS and Power BI model.

Chapter 7 will cover all the different types of database testing that can be done after we have migrated our environment to ensure that our targets and requirements are met.

Chapter 8 is the final chapter which will cover the project outcomes and check whether all our aims have been met.

The database that will be used in this project is AdventureWorksDW2017 and is used for training purposes only. Once, migrated we’ll add a few stored procedures and processes to it to mimic a live commercial dw environment.

Read more in the next chapter where I discuss the Resources that will be used in the project as well as system designs.