SQL Server Stretch Database Service Preview Announced
Today, Microsoft has announced a previews of the new SQL Server Stretch Database service. Now, SQL Server 2016 users could dynamically stretch their on-premises warm and cold data to an Azure service. This Azure service is engineered from the ground up for compute capacity and virtually infinite storage. It would be easier now to keep large amounts of data for an unspecified time. And this would be without worrying about long maintenance windows or the high costs of traditional enterprise storage.
Remote query processing will be feasible through the service by providing compute and storage totally transparent to the application.
As stated via a blog post:
The Stretch Database service makes remote query processing possible by providing compute and storage in a way that’s completely transparent to the application; using Stretch Database typically doesn’t require any application changes. If added security is required you can use Stretch Database with new Always Encrypted technology, where sensitive data is encrypted before sending to Azure and the encryption key always remains on-premises—extending data in a more secured manner for greater peace of mind.
Using Stretch Database with SQL Server 2016
With SQL Server 2016 RCO, enabling stretching to Azure from SQL Server Management Studio, the default behavior is to stretch to Azure SQL Database.
Enroll in the preview of the Database service and instructions will be provided to you for configuring your SQL Server 2016 database for this new service.
The service will be the default target location for stretching, for future builds of SQL Server 2016.
