Webinar Recap
I recently participated in a SentryOne webinar, PaaSport to Paradise, with special guest Microsoft Principal Program Manager Sandy Winarko. We shared how you can use the PaaS solutions of Azure SQL Database/Managed Instance and SSIS in Azure Data Factory (ADF) to lift and shift on-premises ETL workloads and modernize ETL workflows in the cloud.
In the webinar, we covered how to:
- Provision the Azure Data Factory SSIS Integration Runtime (IR) so that you can run your SSIS packages in Azure (including packages with custom components)
- Configure the SSIS IR to access data on premises using Windows authentication, Virtual Network (VNet) injection, and other methods
- Leverage your existing skillset to design, deploy, configure, execute, and monitor your SSIS packages in the cloud just like you do on premises
- Invoke SSIS package executions from Azure Data Factory pipelines and combine them with other activities
If you missed the webinar, you can view it on-demand here.
We received several great questions during the webinar, and we’ve captured them below in case they are helpful to you.
Q&A
Q: Do you need to move your data from on-prem to the cloud to use ADF?
A: No, ADF and SSIS can connect to on-prem data using Azure Virtual Networks. This resource from Microsoft may be helpful.
Q: Can SSIS packages be deployed with Azure DevOps?
A: Yes, they can, although it involves some additional steps. Since this is an in-depth process, we’ll develop a separate blog to address it further.
Q: Is ADF available for all regions? If not, would that slow down the process if we use it from another region?
A: It is not available in all regions, but the Copy Activity service used by ADF is available globally and helps to avoid region hops in many scenarios. Please reference this resource for regional availability.
Q: So, if we have an SSIS package built in Visual Studio 2008, if we lift and shift, do we need to migrate those packages to Visual Studio 2017 and THEN lift and shift?
A: Currently, the SSIS IR requires a project-based deployment model, so you would need SSIS 2012 or later. In the future, file-based deployment will be supported. However, because the SSIS IR will automatically upgrade packages to its version, I would recommend upgrading to a more recent version of SSIS to avoid the issues that can occur with automatic upgrades.
Q: On the integration runtime setup stage, it’s asking for the location of my SSISDB (recommended same as integration). I have nothing in my “location” dropdown to select. Do we have to set this up prior? My colleague is having the same issue. What are we missing?
A: For setting up the SSISDB, you need an Azure SQL DB available. If you don’t have one available in your Azure subscription, that can cause this problem.
You may also find the related on-demand SentryOne webinars helpful:
Keep your eye out for future SentryOne webinars. And, please connect with me online!
-John
John Welch is the Chief Technology Officer at SentryOne, where he leads a team in the development of a suite of data and BI products that make monitoring, building, testing, and documenting data solutions faster and more efficient. John has been working with data, business intelligence, and data warehousing technologies since 2001. He was awarded as a Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP) 2009 – 2016 due to his commitment to sharing his knowledge with the IT community, and is an SSAS Maestro. John is an experienced speaker, having given presentations at Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) conferences, the Microsoft Business Intelligence conference, Software Development West (SD West), Software Management Conference (ASM/SM), SQL Bits, and others. He has also contributed to multiple books on SQL Server and business intelligence.
