SQL Server 2017 now is considered as a hybrid database enterprise solution as it expands its market and is ported to other operating system platforms. It also includes mainstream support for Linux machines. The Cloud makes the life of administrator much easier, now it’s no longer daunting task to configure the SQL Server instance. The easiest way to explore SQL Server on Linux is to provision a virtual machine through Microsoft Azure portal – portal.azure.com. The Linux azure virtual machine will come pre-configured with Linux and SQL Server 2017.
Background
Azure SQL Database is the Microsoft platform-as-a-service (PaaS) database offering. It is scalable and offers a predictable performance; each database is isolated. In addition, Azure SQL databases provide monitoring and alerting as well as failover options. With the on-premise SQL Server, the DBAs are engaged in managing all the upgrades and patching. For instance, when we start using Azure SQL databases, Microsoft manages everything for us.
Prerequisites
If you don’t have an Azure account, you can create a free 30-day trial to test things out.
Prepare Linux VM for SQL Installation
Once you sign up for a free trial version, the first screen you see is the dashboard. It summarizes the current setup with all the default values.
On the dashboard, follow the steps to create a VM machine:
- Click the New button to create a new resource.
- In the search box, type in SQL Server 2017 to list all the SQL Server 2017 VMs
- Select Free SQL Server License: SQL Server 2017 Developer on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4
- Go through the full description. You will need to run the command to configure SQL Server. This is going to be important, so make a note of this text here.
- At the very bottom of the screen, press the Create button to start the process
Continue reading SQL Server 2017 on Linux in the Azure portal
Happy Learning!
