DP-300 Administering Microsoft Azure SQL Solutions Questions and Answers

To configure sq1370O6895 to support the creation of new database users from Azure AD identities, you need to do the following steps:

• Set up a Microsoft Entra tenant and associate it with your Azure subscription. You can use the Microsoft Entra portal or the Azure portal to create and manage your Microsoft Entra users and groups12.
• Configure a Microsoft Entra admin for sq1370O6895. You can use the Azure portal or the Azure CLI to set a Microsoft Entra user as the admin for the server34. The Microsoft Entra admin can create other database users from Microsoft Entra identities5.
• Connect to db1 using the Microsoft Entra admin account and run the following Transact-SQL statement to create a new database user from a Microsoft Entra identity: CREATE USER [Microsoft Entra user name] FROM EXTERNAL PROVIDER;6 You can replace the Microsoft Entra user name with the name of the user or group that you want to create in the database.
• Grant the appropriate permissions to the new database user by adding them to a database role or granting them specific privileges. For example, you can run the following Transact-SQL statement to add the new user to the db_datareader role: ALTER ROLE db_datareader ADD MEMBER [Microsoft Entra user name];

These are the steps to configure sq1370O6895 to support the creation of new database users from Azure AD identities.

To ensure that all queries executed against dbl are captured in the Query Store, you need to enable the Query Store feature for the database and set the query capture mode to ALL. The Query Store feature provides you with insight on query plan choice and performance for Azure SQL Database1. The query capture mode controls whether all queries or only a subset of queries are tracked2.

Here are the steps to enable the Query Store and set the query capture mode to ALL for the database dbl:

• Using the Azure portal:
• Using Transact-SQL statements:

These are the steps to ensure that all queries executed against dbl are captured in the Query Store.

To enable page compression on the PK_SalesOrderHeader_SalesOrderlD clustered index of the SalesLT.SalesOrderHeader table in db1, you can use the following Transact-SQL script:

-- Connect to the Azure SQL database named db1

USE db1;

GO

-- Enable page compression on the clustered index

ALTER INDEX PK_SalesOrderHeader_SalesOrderlD ON SalesLT.SalesOrderHeader

REBUILD WITH (DATA_COMPRESSION = PAGE);

GO

This script will rebuild the clustered index with page compression, which can reduce the storage space and improve the query performance

The script solution consists of three parts:

• The first part is USE db1; GO. This part connects to the Azure SQL database named db1, where the SalesLT.SalesOrderHeader table is located. The GO command separates the batches of Transact-SQL statements and sends them to the server.
• The second part is ALTER INDEX PK_SalesOrderHeader_SalesOrderlD ON SalesLT.SalesOrderHeader REBUILD WITH (DATA_COMPRESSION = PAGE); GO. This part enables page compression on the clustered index named PK_SalesOrderHeader_SalesOrderlD, which is defined on the SalesLT.SalesOrderHeader table. The ALTER INDEX statement modifies the properties of an existing index. The REBUILD option rebuilds the index from scratch, which is required to change the compression setting. The DATA_COMPRESSION = PAGE option specifies that page compression is applied to the index, which means that both row and prefix compression are used. Page compression can reduce the storage space and improve the query performance by compressing the data at the page level. The GO command ends the batch of statements.
• The third part is optional, but it can be useful to verify the compression status of the index. It is SELECT name, index_id, data_compression_desc FROM sys.indexes WHERE object_id = OBJECT_ID('SalesLT.SalesOrderHeader');. This part queries the sys.indexes catalog view, which contains information about the indexes in the database. The SELECT statement returns the name, index_id, and data_compression_desc columns for the indexes that belong to the SalesLT.SalesOrderHeader table. The OBJECT_ID function returns the object identification number for the table name. The data_compression_desc column shows the compression type of the index, which should be PAGE for the clustered index after the script is executed.

These are the steps of the script solution for enabling page compression on the clustered index of the SalesLT.SalesOrderHeader table in db1.

To configure high availability for dbl, you can use the failover groups feature of Azure SQL Database. Failover groups allow you to manage the replication and failover of a group of databases across different regions with the same connection strings1. You can choose all, or a subset of, user databases in a logical server to be replicated to another logical server in a different region. You can also specify the failover policy, such as manual or automatic, and the grace period for data loss.

Here are the steps to create a failover group for dbl:

• Using the Azure portal:

• Using PowerShell commands:

These are the steps to create a failover group for dbl

To ensure that any enhancements made to the Query Optimizer through patches are available to dbl and db2 on sql37006895, you need to enable the query optimizer hotfixes option for each database. This option allows you to use the latest query optimization improvements that are not enabled by default1. You can enable this option by using the ALTER DATABASE SCOPED CONFIGURATION statement2.

Here are the steps to enable the query optimizer hotfixes option for dbl and db2 on sql37006895:

• Connect to sql37006895 using SQL Server Management Studio, Azure Data Studio, or any other tool that supports Transact-SQL statements.
• Open a new query window and run the following commands for each database:

-- Switch to the database context

USE dbl;

GO

-- Enable the query optimizer hotfixes option

ALTER DATABASE SCOPED CONFIGURATION SET QUERY_OPTIMIZER_HOTFIXES = ON;

GO

• Repeat the same commands for db2, replacing dbl with db2 in the USE statement.
• To verify that the query optimizer hotfixes option is enabled for each database, you can query the sys.database_scoped_configurations catalog view. The value of the query_optimizer_hotfixes column should be 1 for both databases.

These are the steps to enable the query optimizer hotfixes option for dbl and db2 on sql37006895.

To generate an email alert to admin@contoso.com when CPU percentage utilization for db1 is higher than average, you can use the Azure portal to create an alert rule based on the CPU percentage metric. Here are the steps to do that:

• Go to the Azure portal and select your Azure SQL Database server that hosts db1.
• Select Alerts in the Monitoring section and click on New alert rule.
• In the Condition section, click Add and select the CPU percentage metric.
• In the Configure signal logic page, set the threshold type to Dynamic. This will compare the current metric value to the historical average and trigger the alert when it deviates significantly1.
• Set the operator to Greater than, the aggregation type to Average, the aggregation granularity to 1 minute, and the frequency of evaluation to 5 minutes.
• Click Done to save the condition.
• In the Action group section, click Create and enter a name and a short name for the action group.
• In the Notifications section, click Add and select Email/SMS message/Push/Voice.
• Enter admin@contoso.com in the Email field and click OK.
• Click OK to save the action group.
• In the Alert rule details section, enter a name and a description for the alert rule, choose a severity level, and make sure the rule is enabled.
• Click Create alert rule to create the alert rule.

This alert rule will send an email to admin@contoso.com when the CPU percentage utilization for db1 is higher than average. You can also add other actions to the alert rule, such as calling a webhook or running an automation script

To configure your user account as the Azure AD admin for the server named sql3700689S, you can use the Azure portal or the Azure CLI. Here are the steps for both methods:

• Using the Azure portal:
• Using the Azure CLI:

These are the steps to configure your user account as the Azure AD admin for the server named sql3700689S.

To prevent db1 from reverting to the last known good query plan, you need to disable the automatic plan correction feature for the database. This feature is enabled by default and allows the Query Store to detect and fix plan performance regressions by forcing the last good plan1. However, if you want to test the performance of different plans without interference from the Query Store, you can turn off this feature by using the ALTER DATABASE SCOPED CONFIGURATION statement2.

Here are the steps to disable the automatic plan correction feature for db1:

• Connect to db1 using SQL Server Management Studio, Azure Data Studio, or any other tool that supports Transact-SQL statements.
• Open a new query window and run the following command: ALTER DATABASE SCOPED CONFIGURATION SET AUTOMATIC_TUNING (FORCE_LAST_GOOD_PLAN = OFF); GO
• This command will disable the automatic plan correction feature for db1 and allow the Query Optimizer to choose the best plan based on the current statistics and parameters3.
• To verify that the automatic plan correction feature is disabled for db1, you can query the sys.database_scoped_configurations catalog view. The value of the force_last_good_plan column should be 0 for db1.

These are the steps to disable the automatic plan correction feature for db1.

An auditing policy can be defined for a specific database or as a default server policy in Azure (which hosts SQL Database or Azure Synapse):

• A server policy applies to all existing and newly created databases on the server.
• If server auditing is enabled, it always applies to the database. The database will be audited, regardless of the database auditing settings.
• Enabling auditing on the database, in addition to enabling it on the server, does not override or change any of the settings of the server auditing. Both audits will exist side by side.

Note:

The Server Audit Specification object belongs to an audit.

A Database Audit Specification defines which Audit Action Groups will be audited for the specific database in which the specification is created.

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Box 1: delete a row from Table1

Members of the db_datawriter fixed database role can add, delete, or change data in all user tables.

Box 2: db_datareader

Members of the db_datareader fixed database role can read all data from all user tables.

Azure RBAC is used to manage who can create, update, or delete the Synapse workspace and its SQL pools, Apache Spark pools, and Integration runtimes.

Define and implement network security configurations for resources related to your dedicated SQL pool with Azure Policy.

The partition count for an event hub in a dedicated Event Hubs cluster can be increased after the event hub has been created.

If you need to transform data in a way that is not supported by Data Factory, you can create a custom activity,

not a mapping flow,5 with your own data processing logic and use the activity in the pipeline. You can create a

custom activity to run R scripts on your HDInsight cluster with R installed.

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Box 1: Hash

Scenario:

Ensure that queries joining and filtering sales transaction records based on product ID complete as quickly as possible.

A hash distributed table can deliver the highest query performance for joins and aggregations on large tables.

Box 2: Round-robin

Scenario:

You plan to create a promotional table that will contain a promotion ID. The promotion ID will be associated to a specific product. The product will be identified by a product ID. The table will be approximately 5 GB.

A round-robin table is the most straightforward table to create and delivers fast performance when used as a staging table for loads. These are some scenarios where you should choose Round robin distribution:

• When you cannot identify a single key to distribute your data.
• If your data doesn’t frequently join with data from other tables.
• When there are no obvious keys to join.

The lifecycle management policy lets you:

Delete blobs, blob versions, and blob snapshots at the end of their lifecycles

Scenario: Contoso requirements for the sales transaction dataset include:

Implement a surrogate key to account for changes to the retail store addresses.

A surrogate key on a table is a column with a unique identifier for each row. The key is not generated from the

table data. Data modelers like to create surrogate keys on their tables when they design data warehouse models. You can use the IDENTITY property to achieve this goal simply and effectively without affecting load performance.

Scenario: Real-time processing must be monitored to ensure that workloads are sized properly based on actual usage patterns.

To monitor the performance of a database in Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance, start by monitoring the CPU and IO resources used by your workload relative to the level of database performance you chose in selecting a particular service tier and performance level.

Scenario: The sales data, including the documents in JSON format, must be gathered as it arrives and analyzed online by using Azure Stream Analytics. The analytics process will perform aggregations that must be done continuously, without gaps, and without overlapping.

Tumbling window functions are used to segment a data stream into distinct time segments and perform a function against them, such as the example below. The key differentiators of a Tumbling window are that they repeat, do not overlap, and an event cannot belong to more than one tumbling window.

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Scenario: In the event of an Azure regional outage, ensure that the customers can access the PaaS solution with minimal downtime. The solution must provide automatic failover.

The auto-failover groups feature allows you to manage the replication and failover of a group of databases on a server or all databases in a managed instance to another region. It is a declarative abstraction on top of the existing active geo-replication feature, designed to simplify deployment and management of geo-replicated databases at scale. You can initiate failover manually or you can delegate it to the Azure service based on a user-defined policy.

The latter option allows you to automatically recover multiple related databases in a secondary region after a catastrophic failure or other unplanned event that results in full or partial loss of the SQL Database or SQL Managed Instance availability in the primary region.

There are CPU and Data I/O spikes for the PaaS prototype. Business Critical 4-vCore is needed.

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Scenario: Authenticate database users by using Active Directory credentials.

(Create a new Azure SQL database named ResearchDB1 on a logical server named ResearchSrv01.)

Authenticate the user in SQL Database or SQL Data Warehouse based on an Azure Active Directory user:

CREATE USER [Fritz@contoso.com] FROM EXTERNAL PROVIDER;

Scenario: SalesSQLDb1 uses database firewall rules and contained database users.

Scenario: Business Requirements

Litware identifies business requirements include: meet an SLA of 99.99% availability for all Azure deployments.

Box 1: Cloud witness

If you have a Failover Cluster deployment, where all nodes can reach the internet (by extension of Azure), it is recommended that you configure a Cloud Witness as your quorum witness resource.

Box 2: Azure Basic Load Balancer

Microsoft guarantees that a Load Balanced Endpoint using Azure Standard Load Balancer, serving two or more Healthy Virtual Machine Instances, will be available 99.99% of the time.

Note: There are two main options for setting up your listener: external (public) or internal. The external (public) listener uses an internet facing load balancer and is associated with a public Virtual IP (VIP) that is accessible over the internet. An internal listener uses an internal load balancer and only supports clients within the same Virtual Network.

Box 1: The server, the elastic pool, and the database

Senario:

SalesSQLDb1 is in an elastic pool named SalesSQLDb1Pool.

Litware technical requirements include: all SQL Server and Azure SQL Database metrics related to CPU and storage usage and limits must be analyzed by using Azure built-in functionality.

Box 2: Azure Event hubs

Scenario: Migrate ManufacturingSQLDb1 to the Azure virtual machine platform.

Event hubs are able to handle custom metrics.

Box 1: DTU

Scenario:

• The 30 new databases must scale automatically.
• Once all requirements are met, minimize costs whenever possible.

You can configure resources for the pool based either on the DTU-based purchasing model or the vCore-based purchasing model.

In short, for simplicity, the DTU model has an advantage. Plus, if you’re just getting started with Azure SQL Database, the DTU model offers more options at the lower end of performance, so you can get started at a lower price point than with vCore.

Box 2: An Azure SQL database elastic pool

Azure SQL Database elastic pools are a simple, cost-effective solution for managing and scaling multiple databases that have varying and unpredictable usage demands. The databases in an elastic pool are on a single server and share a set number of resources at a set price. Elastic pools in Azure SQL Database enable SaaS developers to optimize the price performance for a group of databases within a prescribed budget while delivering performance elasticity for each database.

Azure Database Migration service

Box 1: Premium 4-VCore

Scenario: Migrate the SERVER1 databases to the Azure SQL Database platform.

• Minimize downtime during the migration of the SERVER1 databases.

Premimum 4-vCore is for large or business critical workloads. It supports online migrations, offline migrations, and faster migration speeds.

SalesSQLDb1 experiences performance issues that are likely due to out-of-date statistics and frequent blocking queries.

A: Use sys.dm_pdw_nodes_tran_locks instead of sys.dm_tran_locks from Azure Synapse Analytics (SQL Data Warehouse) or Parallel Data Warehouse.

E: Example:

The following query will show blocking information.

SELECT

t1.resource_type,

t1.resource_database_id,

t1.resource_associated_entity_id,

t1.request_mode,

t1.request_session_id,

t2.blocking_session_id

FROM sys.dm_tran_locks as t1

INNER JOIN sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks as t2

ON t1.lock_owner_address = t2.resource_address;

Note: Depending on the system you’re working with you can access these wait statistics from one of three locations:

sys.dm_os_wait_stats: for SQL Server

sys.dm_db_wait_stats: for Azure SQL Database

sys.dm_pdw_nodes_os_wait_stats: for Azure SQL Data Warehouse

Scenario: Authenticate database users by using Active Directory credentials.

The configuration steps include the following procedures to configure and use Azure Active Directory authentication.

• Create and populate Azure AD.

• Optional: Associate or change the active directory that is currently associated with your Azure Subscription.
• Create an Azure Active Directory administrator. (Step 1)
• Configure your client computers.
• Create contained database users in your database mapped to Azure AD identities. (Step 2)
• Connect to your database by using Azure AD identities. (Step 3)

Automating Azure SQL DB index and statistics maintenance using Azure Automation:

1. Create Azure automation account (Step 1)

2. Import SQLServer module (Step 2)

3. Add Credentials to access SQL DB

This will use secure way to hold login name and password that will be used to access Azure SQL DB

4. Add a runbook to run the maintenance (Step 3)

Steps: 1. Click on "runbooks" at the left panel and then click "add a runbook"

2. Choose "create a new runbook" and then give it a name and choose "Powershell" as the type of the runbook and then click on "create"

5. Schedule task (Step 4)

Steps:1. Click on Schedules2. Click on "Add a schedule" and follow the instructions to choose existing schedule or create a new schedule.

Box 1: Full and log backups only

Make sure to take every backup on a separate backup media (backup files). Azure Database Migration Service doesn't support backups that are appended to a single backup file. Take full backup and log backups to separate backup files.

Box 2: WITH CHECKSUM

Azure Database Migration Service uses the backup and restore method to migrate your on-premises databases to SQL Managed Instance. Azure Database Migration Service only supports backups created using checksum.

Backlogged Input Events: Number of input events that are backlogged. A non-zero value for this metric implies that your job isn't able to keep up with the number of incoming events. If this value is slowly increasing or consistently non-zero, you should scale out your job, by increasing the SUs.

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