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Prerequisites - SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc

  • Article

Applies to: SQL Server

An Azure Arc-enabled instance of SQL Server is an instance on-premises or in a cloud provider that is connected to Azure Arc. This article explains those prerequisites.

If your SQL Server VMs are on VMware clusters, review Support on VMware.

Before you deploy

Before you can Arc-enable an instance of SQL Server, you need to:

Permissions

  • The user account or service principal requires read permission on the subscription.

Note

Before enabling SQL Servers with Arc, the installation script checks that the region where the Arc-enabled SQL Server is being created is supported. It also verifies that the required resource provider, Microsoft.AzureArcData, is registered in the subscription. These check requires the user account or service principal used for Azure authentication to have read permission on the subscription.

  • User or service principal must have permissions in the Azure resource group to complete the task. Specifically:

    • Azure Connected Machine Onboarding role
    • Microsoft.AzureArcData/register/action
    • Microsoft.HybridCompute/machines/extensions/read
    • Microsoft.HybridCompute/machines/extensions/write
    • Microsoft.Resources/deployments/validate/action

Users can be assigned to built-in roles that have these permissions, for example Contributor or Owner. For more information, see Assign Azure roles using the Azure portal.

  • Have local administrator permission on the operating system to install and configure the agent.
    • For Linux, use the root account.
    • For Windows, use an account that is a member of the Local Administrators group.

Set proxy exclusions

Note

The exclusion in this section is required for the March, 2024 release and before.

Beginning with the release in April, 2024 this exclusion is not required.

If a proxy server is used, set the NO_PROXY environment variable to exclude proxy traffic for:

  • localhost
  • 127.0.0.1

Connect to Azure Arc data processing service

Arc-enabled SQL Server requires outbound connection to Azure Arc data processing service.

Each virtual or physical server requires connectivity to:

  • URL: *.<region>.arcdataservices.com
  • Port: 443
  • Direction: Outbound

To get the region segment of a regional endpoint, remove all spaces from the Azure region name. For example, East US 2 region, the region name is eastus2.

For example: *.<region>.arcdataservices.com should be *.eastus2.arcdataservices.com in the East US 2 region.

For a list of supported regions, review Supported Azure regions.

For a list of all regions, run this command:

az account list-locations -o table

Note

You can't use Azure Private Link connections to the Azure Arc data processing service. See Unsupported configurations.

Supported SQL Server versions and environments

SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc supports SQL Server 2012 (11.x) and later versions, running on one of the following versions of the Windows or Linux operating system:

  • Windows Server 2012 and later versions
  • Ubuntu 20.04 (x64)
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8 (x64)
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 15 (x64)

Support for Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server failover cluster instances (FCI) is introduced as preview in October, 2023.

Important

Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 support ended on October 10, 2023. For more information, see SQL Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012/2012 R2 end of support.

Support on VMware

You can deploy SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc in VMware VMs running:

  • On-premises
  • In VMware solutions, for example:

    • Azure VMware Solution (AVS)

      Warning

      If you're running SQL Server VMs in Azure VMware Solution (AVS) private cloud, follow the steps in Deploy Arc-enabled Azure VMware Solution to enable.

      This is the only deployment mechanism that provides you with a fully integrated experience with Arc capabilities within the AVS private cloud.

    • VMware Cloud on AWS

    • Google Cloud VMware Engine

Unsupported configurations

Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server doesn't currently support the following configurations:

  • SQL Server running in containers.
  • SQL Server roles other than the Database Engine, such as Analysis Services (SSAS), Reporting Services (SSRS), or Integration Services (SSIS).
  • SQL Server editions: Business Intelligence.
  • Private Link connections to the Azure Arc data processing service at the <region>.arcdataservices.com endpoint used for inventory and usage upload.
  • SQL Server 2008 (10.0.x), SQL Server 2008 R2 (10.50.x), and older versions.
  • Installing the Arc agent and SQL Server extension can't be done as part of sysprep image creation.
  • Multiple instances of SQL Server installed on the same host operating system with the same instance name.
  • SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machines.
  • An Always On availability group where one or more replicas is on a failover cluster instance.

Register resource providers

To register the resource providers, use one of the following methods:

  1. Select Subscriptions.
  2. Choose your subscription.
  3. Under Settings, select Resource providers.
  4. Search for Microsoft.AzureArcData and Microsoft.HybridCompute and select Register.

Azure subscription and service limits

Before configuring your SQL Server instances and machines with Azure Arc, review the Azure Resource Manager subscription limits and resource group limits to plan for the number of machines to be connected.

Supported regions

Arc-enabled SQL Server is available in the following regions:

  • East US
  • East US 2
  • West US
  • West US 2
  • West US 3
  • Central US
  • North Central US
  • South Central US
  • West Central US
  • Canada Central
  • Canada East
  • UK South
  • UK West
  • France Central
  • West Europe
  • North Europe
  • Switzerland North
  • Central India
  • Brazil South
  • South Africa North
  • UAE North
  • Japan East
  • Korea Central
  • Southeast Asia
  • Australia East
  • Sweden Central
  • Norway East

Important

For successful onboarding and functioning, assign the same region to both Arc-enabled Server and Arc-enabled SQL Server.

Install Azure extension for SQL Server

The SQL Server 2022 (16.x) Setup Installation Wizard doesn't support installation of the Azure extension for SQL Server. There are two ways to install this component. Do one of the following:

For VMware clusters, review Support on VMware.

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