Database copy preview on Azure SQL Database Hyperscale

Database copy provides a way to create a transactionally consistent snapshot of the source database as a new database on the same server or different server. It also enables copy across regions, subscriptions, and Azure tenants using the same or different service level objective.

On Azure SQL Hyperscale the time taken by database copy depends on the source and destination chosen for the copy

If the destination is the same region as the source, then the copy is created from snapshots of blobs created by database backups. This kind of copy is a fast operation regardless of database size.

If the destination region for the copy is different from the source region, the copy is a size of data operation. Page server blobs are copied in parallel, so the copy time is not directly proportional to the size of data, yet it is a potentially long running size of data operation.

Below are some sample durations for database copy in Hyperscale:

Database size	Source region	Destination region	Elapsed time (mins)
1TB	West US 2	Central US	180
1 TB	West US 2	West US 2	12
7.2TB	West US 2	Central US	269
7.2TB	West US 2	West US 2	13

Creating a Database Copy

Database copy can be created started with PowerShell, Azure CLI, REST API, or T-SQL. Cross subscription and cross tenant copy is only supported using T-SQL. If you do not specify a service objective for the target database, the default service objective and configurations are used, which is HS_Gen5_2 with 1 additional replica which can be used for reads.

Azure CLI

az sql db copy –resource-group “sourceRG” –server sourceServer –name “sourceDB” –dest-resource-group destDB –dest-server destServer –dest-name destDB –service-objective HS_Gen5_2 –read-replicas 0

PowerShell

New-AzSqlDatabaseCopy -ResourceGroupName “sourceRG” -ServerName sourceServer `-DatabaseName “sourceDB” `
-CopyResourceGroupName “destinationRG” -CopyServerName destServer -CopyDatabaseName “destDB”

TSQL

CREATE DATABASE Database2 AS COPY OF SourceServer.Database1;

Portal

Another way to copy the database is via the Azure portal.

Portal Portal

Monitoring database copy:

In the master database:

select * from sys.dm_operation_status

sys.dm_operation_status

Note: the progress status values are limited to 0/50/100%.

Current preview Limitations

sys.dm_database_copies does not currently track progress of database copy, this will be addressed before GA.

Currently portal target database allows choice of elastic pool but the copy will fail as Hyperscale does not support Elastic pools