Change your hardware from Gen4 to Standard Series (Gen5) for your Azure SQL Servers and Databases.
As we know, From 31 January 2023 the Intel E5–2673 (Haswell) v3-based CPU and Gen 4 hardware will no longer be supported in azure. So we need to migrate the hardware from Gen4 to Gen5 but before migrating you will be having many questions in your head. This article will help you in all your questions in migrating your hardware.
Last week we received a alert “Action required: Transition to newer compute hardware by 31 January 2023” because we were using Azure SQL Elastic Pool which was still running on Gen4.
Now first let’s see what are the steps to change the hardware in Azure
How to change your hardware in Azure?
Step 1: Go to your Azure Portal and Open the SQL Server/Elastic pool, On your left hand side options Click on Configure and you will be seeing the below window here click on Change configuration.
Step 2: By clicking on Change configuration, the new window will be opened as below for you. Here just select the Standard series(Gen5) and click on Ok.
Now, as you all know what are steps to change the hardware but before doing the migration of hardware make sure you have whole knowledge about how this change works.
How the change hardware process works?
Changing the service tier or performance level of a database/ server in Azure creates a replica of the original database at the new performance level, and then switches connections over to the replica. No data is lost during this process but during the brief moment when we switch over to the replica, connections to the database are disabled, so some transactions in flight may be rolled back. This window varies, but is on average under 4 seconds, and in more than 99% of cases is less than 30 seconds.
How much time it will take to upgrade from Generation 4 to Generation 5 in Azure?
This can be a tricky question, we did a lot of research before doing our migration but we couldn’t find any specific answer. Answering to your question. We migrated a SQL Server Elastic Pool/Server who’s size was 1.331 TB and It took us around 23.33 Minutes.
Is the Database/Server going to be accessible during this upgrade?
Yes, Your database and servers will be available throughout the update. All your Data factory pipelines can perform read write operations during this process, you can perform select/write operations while the upgradation.
Which Azure SQL Server should be upgraded first Primary or Secondary?
Firstly, we should always keep an habit to perform any new change on Secondary server so that even something goes wrong our primary (production: business critical) will always serve the business purpose.
So update the Secondary Server first then go for Primary server.
Will costing be affected from changing Gen4 to Gen5 in Azure?
Costing will not be affected in this situation. The costing is same for Gen4 and Gen5. So you don’t have to worry about this factor.
Are there any maintenance tasks that need to be performed after this upgrade?
No, You don’t need to perform any tasks after this activity. Your Azure SQL Database/Server will be ready to use directly.
I hope this article has helped in answering all your questions. Go ahead change your hardware configuration of Azure SQL Servers and Databases before 31 January 2023 to avoid any inconvenience. If you have any other questions related to the article feel free to drop a comment below. Thanks!!!
