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I logged into Azure at the weekend to set up a basic federated database structure, and discovered that Federations have been deprecated.

I contacted Microsoft Customer Support who advised I should implement custom sharding for sclaing the database. However, I can't find any guidance on MS website for recommended approaches to this. The only article i've discovered references custom sharding but doesn't go into detail on how to approach this: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn495641.aspx.

I'm an Azure newbie, and i'm just looking to set up a basic 4 table relational database, pump a load of data into it and then run queries against the db to look at the performance - if anyone can advise on a suitable approach (a tutorial would be perfect) to custom sharding i'd be hugely grateful.

Appreciate any help anyone can offer. Regards, Jon

Joseph Idziorek
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Jon295087
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2 Answers2

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Jon, See a session here - the referenced sample library should be available soon:

SQL Database Sharding Patterns: http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Data-Exposed/SqlDbShardingIntro

-Simon.

Simon Gurevich
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  • There is also some earlier material from the same team (AzureCAT) on sharding at: http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2013/09/05/dal-sharding-of-rdbms/ – Neil Mackenzie Jul 21 '14 at 17:01
  • Simon, Neil - thanks for both of these. The paper's useful to reference against, and i'll find an hour to watch the video content. Many thanks for your very speedy help :-) Jon – Jon295087 Jul 22 '14 at 13:23
  • MS has just released a utility to migrate away from Federation http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/Federations-Migration-ce61e9c1 http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Windows-Azure/Azure-SQL-Database-Federations-Migration – pateketu Oct 02 '14 at 15:10
  • Please also see Elastic Scale for SQL Database: http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/sql-database-elastic-scale-documentation-map/ – Joseph Idziorek Mar 13 '15 at 04:29
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Check out the Elastic Database Tools features of Azure SQL DB, which have been released to replace Federations. A comprehensive set of documentation can be found here along with a 5-minute getting started example here.

Stuart Ozer
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