This course explains how to optimize dedicated SQL pools in Azure Synapse Analytics using different data distribution methods, partitioning, and query optimization. It also gives a quick overview of the security and disaster recovery features of dedicated SQL pools.
Learning Objectives
- Know when to use round-robin, hash-distributed, and replicated distributions
- Know when to partition a table
- Optimize queries using statistics, caching, and log investigation
- Understand the security and disaster recovery features of dedicated SQL pools
Intended Audience
- Anyone who would like to learn advanced features of dedicated SQL pools in Azure Synapse Analytics
Prerequisites
- Some knowledge of Azure Synapse Analytics (take Introduction to Azure Synapse Analytics if you’re not familiar with this Microsoft service)
- Experience with SQL (not mandatory)
Okay, the next topic is disaster recovery. Azure takes snapshots of your Synapse Analytics data warehouse throughout the day. Then if you need to restore your data warehouse to a previous state, you can simply choose which of the automatic restore points you want to go back to.
In some cases, you may want to create your own user-defined restore points in addition to the automatic restore points. For example, you may want to take a snapshot before you make a large number of changes to your data.
Both the automatic and user-defined restore points are stored in the primary region where your data warehouse runs, so if the primary region is down, you won’t be able to access any of those restore points. To ensure that you will still be able to bring up your data warehouse in another region, Azure makes a geo-redundant backup once a day to a paired data center. If disaster strikes, you can use that backup to restore a copy of your data warehouse to any region that supports Synapse Analytics.
And that’s it for disaster recovery.
Guy launched his first training website in 1995 and he's been helping people learn IT technologies ever since. He has been a sysadmin, instructor, sales engineer, IT manager, and entrepreneur. In his most recent venture, he founded and led a cloud-based training infrastructure company that provided virtual labs for some of the largest software vendors in the world. Guy’s passion is making complex technology easy to understand. His activities outside of work have included riding an elephant and skydiving (although not at the same time).