Database synchronization on Azure with different Affinity Groups

Question

From time to time, we have the need to copy/replicate production database into development database. Database being quite big, and servers on different affinity group.

What's the best way to do it without incurring in traffic costs (if at all possible) ? Development and Production ideally should be on different Affinity Group but makes this scenario harder.

If they were on same affinity group, can I connect like they were on the same LAN ?

Answer 1

As you're talking about an affinity group I'm assuming you're using a database server on a Virtual Machine.

Traffic costs only apply when sending data out of the data centre, so irrespective of whether the servers are on the same affinity group or not you will not incur data transfer costs as long as you deploy everything to the same Windows Azure dada centre.

If you deployed all the virtual machines on the same virtual network they will simply see each other on the network.

Another option, which does not require the servers being on the same network (or even on the same account), when using SQL Server, is to export the database to blob storage and import it on the other server.

This would also be the mechanism I would use if you were using Windows Azure SQL Database