dbForge SQL Azure Backup

dbForge SQL Azure Backup is an easy GUI tool for creating backup copies of SQL Azure database to local drive, SQL Server, or Azure Blob Storage for development or archive purposes.

Use dbForge SQL Azure Backup tool to:

Create a copy of your SQL Azure database on local SQL Server
Make an archive copy on your local hard drive
Restore SQL Azure database from archive
Schedule periodic backups to your Azure Blob storage

How does dbForge SQL Azure Backup work?

In short, this product allows you to easily create backups as a set of T-SQL scripts packed into ZIP archive, or just copy cloud database to on-premise SQL Server. SQL Azure Backup consists of 4 components:

Windows Azure service
GUI application to backup databases
Two console applications: for backup and restore
PowerShell interface and .NET Framework API

Benefits

Transparent backup format

Our backup is just a simple ZIP archive with T-SQL scripts, which you can run with any tool like SSMS or sqlcmd. This guarantees that you can restore the database in any environment.

Charge-free bandwidth

Unlike transmitting data from SQL Azure to your local PC, you don't have to pay when SQL Azure and the deployed service are in the same region. Thus you'll have to pay only for storing backups on Blob Storage. Moreover, our engine does not require temporary disk space and consumes only 20Mb of RAM, what reduces charges for average disk space usage.

Less space = less expenses

The maximum ZIP compression of T-SQL scripts yields fairly small .zip file, which is even smaller than the original database .mdf file compressed with ZIP, or compressed backup .bak file. Storing such small files on Blob Storage will significantly reduce monthly expenses.

Easy database restoring

The backup consists of three T-SQL scripts: create database itself, create database objects, fill tables with data. All scripts are compatible with any SQL Server (Azure/2005/2008/2011), thus you can execute them via any tool, like SSMS or sqlcmd.

Periodical backup by schedule

You can configure the service for Windows Azure to periodically make backup of a database, what releases you from manual labour. You can specify the lifetime of a backup file so that the service will delete them to free up the space on Blob Storage. This will save your money on storing relevant backups only.