On the Azure Cloud tab, you can:
- Specify the Azure Container Name where the new blob will be created and the backup stored. Every Azure blob must reside in a container. The container forms part of the blob name. If no container with the input name exists, a new one will be created.
Consider the following naming conventions for your container:
- All letters should be in lowercase.
- The container name should be a valid DNS name.
- The container name should start or end with a letter or number and can contain only letters, numbers, and the dash (-) character.
- Every dash (-) character must be immediately preceded and followed by a letter or number. Consecutive dashes are not permitted in container names.
- Names can be from three to sixty-three characters long.
- Specify the Azure Storage Account Name of your storage account. Every object stored in Azure Storage has a unique URL address. The storage account name forms the subdomain of that address.
Consider the following blob naming rules:
A blob name can contain any combination of characters.
A blob name must be at least one character long and cannot be more than 1,024 characters long.
Blob names are case-sensitive.
The number of subfolders cannot exceed 254.
Avoid filenames that end with a dot (.), a forward slash (/), or a sequence or combination of the two.
The Microsoft Azure Blob service is based on a flat storage scheme, not a hierarchical scheme. However, SQL Safe allows you to specify subfolders that act as a virtual hierarchy. If you store a large number of blobs in your Azure container, then it is recommended to utilize subfolders to improve SQL Safe performance. You can find more information on the following link.
- Specify the Access Key provided to your Azure Storage Account. For more information about Azure Keys, click here.
- Set the SubFolder(s) (Optional) where your backup will be stored or restored from. Consider the following situations:
- If the SubFolder field is left empty, the backup file will be saved in the root of the specified container.
- If the SubFolder field is populated with the name of a folder that does not exist on the storage container \ bucket, the folder will be created, and the backup file will be saved to the specified Subfolder.
- Multiple SubFolders can be specified by separating each folder with a forward slash: MyFolder/MySubfolder/MyNestedFolder.
- The SubFolder field can contain static values as well as tokens like %instance%, %database%, %backuptype%, %policyguid%, and %timestamp%.
- Define the Azure Sector Type:
- Public - commercial cloud storage solution.
- Government - cloud storage solution offered to US government customers and their partners.
- Specify the Authentication Type:
- Key
- SAS (Shared Access Signature Service URL).
- Specify the Part Size in megabytes of the backup file that will be sent to the bucket simultaneously.
The default value for File Size is 10 MB.
- Specify the Temporary Download Location to improve resiliency and performance when downloading large backup files from Microsoft Azure Blob Storage. This location will be displayed when the "Download File from Cloud" option is checked in a restore wizard or restore policy.
- Microsoft recommends using the General Purpose v2 Azure Storage Account type.
- When Azure Cloud settings are configured in the Management Console Preferences, the information is set to default in the SQL Safe wizards.
Failed Backup
- If the backup fails before creating all blobs and only a couple of blobs are created, these blobs will remain in the container unless you manually delete them.