How to Setup an Azure SQL Database

In many cases, there is great justification for configuring infrastructure around Microsoft SQL Server. Now with SQL in Azure, the possibility to scale workloads and services has been greatly enhanced. To start, you must decide on what type of workloads will be placed within your cloud infrastructure. At best, you should develop a good cloud strategy around your business’s needs.

If you take a look in the “tiered” options for when creating a SQL Database within Azure, you will find that depending on your workloads, you have many scaleable options to choose from. Within the tiered options, you can choose from Basic, Standard, Premium.

Basic – Used for lighter workloads. Can be used for testing, development, and small projects.

Standard – Used mainly for OLTP databases. Within this tier performance can be more predictable in terms of tiered levels. (Ex. S0 to S3)

Premium – Used to increase scaling from the Standard Tier. Allows for more measurable interpretation of how your workloads should be scaled.

Metrics Scale

Metrics

There are also tool sets that Microsoft provides to measure your workloads from on-premise to migrate over to Azure. Specifically the DTU calculator provided by Microsoft helps measure performance, usage, and other variations of your workload.

DTU Calculator – http://dtucalculator.azurewebsites.net/

How to Integrate Microsoft Teams with PRTG

Recently while researching new ways of integrating applications with Microsoft Teams, I found a post within PRTG’s blog site which then directed me to the knowledge base with a plethora of info regarding integration and configuration.

If you are not sure what is this thing called Microsoft Teams, well you may have been under your rock way too long!

As of March 2017, Microsoft took the stance and decided to build a direct competitor to an older, mature collaboration tool called Slack. At that time, Slack was in the enterprise for quite sometime with a huge user base. While both tools share some of the same feature sets, Microsoft is really making a case with the integration options for familiar tools.

See the links below regarding integrating PRTG with Microsoft Teams, please see the below links.

https://www.paessler.com/blog/sending-notifications-via-microsoft-teams

https://kb.paessler.com/en/topic/72306-can-i-send-notifications-to-microsoft-teams-with-prtg