Windows Azure: how to recover trial account SQL Server data

azure, azure-storage

Solution

I had this very issue happen to a client of mine a few weeks ago. We had them set up an Azure 3-Month free trial while we finished the development and testing of their solution. They set me up as a Co-Administrator and I deployed the solution for them when completed.

Fast-forward 3 months later and I get an e-mail and call from the client that he's getting notified by his customers that the site is displaying a site unavailable message.

I was able to get assistance from Azure support on this issue. It's actually considered a Billing issue when you open the support ticket, so starting a support ticket is free.

All you need to do is log into the Azure Management portal and select the Support option from the top menu. Click the link "Get Support" under "technical and billing support". At this point a customized "Contact Microsoft Support" dialog will pop up with all your Subscriptions listed with an option to select the Support Type. In this case, you'll select the expired subscription and choose "Billing" as the support type and also the appropriate Region and Language and then Create Ticket.

I don't recall the exact options that appear after that step, but you'll be able to select an option for expired services and enter some comments to describe that you'd like to access the data from your expired trial.

An Azure Support Engineer got back to us the next business day and responded "I have looked at your account. If all you require is access to your website and database, you don’t have to migrate anything. I can reactivate your expired trial subscription as a Pay-As-You-Go subscription. All your data will still be in your storage account."

In the end, we didn't end up needing their assistance after all. As with all issues like this, I had already started with an alternate plan in case they had not been able to simply re-activate the account. Luckily with this solution, there was no data stored anywhere except the database.

I had the original web project in source control and also a recent .bacpac export of the SQL Azure database stored in Azure Storage under another non-expired account. We set up a new Pay-as-you-go account and redeployed the site and restored the database within a few hours.

Had we not had the "Plan B" option, it appears that they can simply re-activate the expired account. Azure Support has been great for me any time I've needed assistance with an issue, so they're always the best place to start.

Cheers, Jason

Problem

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