Wade Wegner

Last month I blogged about the SQL Azure Migration Wizard created by George Huey.  This tool helps you to migrate your SQL Server database into SQL Azure and is available up on Codeplex.  To date, this tool has been downloaded almost a thousand times!

The number one request for the migration wizard was the ability to replicate your data up to SQL Azure (in addition to the SQL schema, which it already does).  Unfortunately, the original SQL Azure CTP didn’t support BCP, and the data migration process was very difficult and required an SSIS package to copy the data into SQL Azure.

With yesterday’s release of SQL Azure CTP 2, however, SQL Azure now supports BCP!

Minutes after CTP 2 went live, George published a new version of migration wizard that takes advantage of BCP to enable you to migrate not only your SQL Server 2005 / 2008 database objects but your data as well!  migration wizard allows you to turn on or off data migration via the application configuration file or during runtime via the options page.  When you select data migration, the export and import process can be quite lengthy.  migration wizard kicks off the export and import process on a back ground thread and will display the BCP results in the program window.  At any time during the process, you can hit the cancel button to cancel the background process.  As migration wizard processes information, it will display the results to the program window.

Here are the release notes for version 1.0 (and 1.1):

• Added data migration via BCP. Note that when you specify your SQL Azure username, specify your user name as "username@server". Also note that data migration only works on the latest release of SQL Azure (Server Location: South Central US).
• Modified App.Config to allow you to specify your Options. For example: If you do not want to migrate data, you can turn this off by modifying the App.Config file and changing ScriptData to false.
• Added a cancel button so that you can cancel while processing.
• Added a scroll toggle so that during processing you can keep the control from scrolling down to the bottom.
• Fixed an error in BCP command to allow the passing of the SQL Server instance name.
• Added color to the SQL results to better identify error messages.

If you’re using SQL Azure, go and grab the new version of the SQL Azure Migration Wizard!  For detailed instructions on how to use the wizard, take a look at the SQL Azure Migration Wizard whitepaper.

I find myself doing this over and over again, so I figured it would be worthwhile to post.  Below you’ll find a really useful way for installing a Windows O/S from a bootable USB device.  I am particularly dependent on USB drives, as I have a Lenovo X61 Tablet that doesn’t have a CD/DVD-ROM (unless I’m docked, but I’m hardly in the office).

A couple of notes:

• This assumes you’re running Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008
• I’ve tested by installing the following O/S’s: Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008
• You must have a machine capable of booting from a USB drive

Without further ado, here are the steps:

1. Open an elevated command prompt.
2. You must make your USB drive bootable.  Type the following in the command prompt:

   diskpart
   list disk (FIND YOUR USB DISK)
   select disk 1 (OR WHATEVER YOUR DISK NUMBER IS)
   clean
   create partition primary
   select partition 1
   active
   format fs=NTFS
   assign
   exit
   

3. Mount your Windows Server ISO (or unpack it) and copy the contents of the CD/DVD onto your USB.  Make sure you get all files, including hidden ones.

You should now be able to use this USB drive to install a new O/S.  Good luck!

Lately it seems that I have had to acquire a lot of hotfixes for Microsoft products.  Unfortunately, most of the KB articles don’t provide a link to the hotfix, but instead ask you to contact Microsoft Support (via phone) to acquire the hotfix.  Kind of a pain!

Fortunately, my friend Rich Finn just passed along this useful link:

Hotfix Request Web Submission Form

Very useful … no longer will I have to reach out an contact individual escalation engineers I’ve worked with in the past. <sheepish grin>