Hi,
I am writing an Add-on (for the Azure Store), say a custom database.
But where should I physically allocate my database instances? I'd like them to be geographically close to the applications that use them. I know the ProviderAPI receives an Azure region: https://github.com/WindowsAzure/azure-resource-provider-sdk/blob/master/docs/api-create-resource.md

So is this the recommendation - install my database on Azure IaaS, on various regions?
Or is there some way to make it even closer - same DNS domain? same IP subnet? Maybe an easy way to make it the same Azure Virtual Network? Naturally this would help security.

Thanks.

• Edited by sol myr72 Monday, January 20, 2014 11:25 AM

hi sol,

Thanks for posting!

Considering the range of users and base on my experience, I  suggest you could create the SQL database on various regions. And then you could use something like the Traffic Manager to redirect users to the closest data center, you probably would want to have all the databases in the different regions in sync between them making all this process transparent to the user. Also, you could use  SQL Azure Data Sync, which is the tool that will help you in this matter. In a nutshell, SQL Azure Data Sync is a cloud-based data synchronization service built on the Microsoft Sync Framework technologies. And it may be in the same regions If you use VN or same DNS Domain. You could refer to this blog to get more details about how to efficiently use azure regions ( http://weblogs.asp.net/cibrax/archive/2011/10/26/using-windows-azure-regions-efficiently.aspx  ).

Thanks.

Regards,

Will

Hi,

Thanks very much for the reply and the link.
Could we just please verify:

1) The link mentions "Affinity Groups" - can I make sure my database instance is allocated on the same AffinityGroup as the application? I thought the Addon ResourceProvider receives only region, not AffinityGroup :(

2) I was hoping to learn from the behavior of standard Azure SQL - would you happen to know if they manage to allocate instances on the same Affinity Group as the application? Do they set up a VPN?

Thanks 

• Edited by sol myr72 1 hour 36 minutes ago

Hi,

Thanks very much for the reply and the link.
Could we just please verify:

1) The link mentions "Affinity Groups" - can I make sure my database instance is allocated on the same AffinityGroup as the application? I thought the Addon ResourceProvider receives only region, not AffinityGroup :(

2) I was hoping to learn from the behavior of standard Azure SQL - would you happen to know if they manage to allocate instances on the same Affinity Group as the application? Do they set up a VPN?

Thanks 

• Edited by sol myr72 Tuesday, January 21, 2014 10:05 AM