Cross Subscription Copying of Databases on Windows Azure SQL Database

azure, azure-sql-database

Solution

I guess you already have a solution, however for anyone landing here, you can use the Azure PowerShell API's to Create a new server in the source subscription, create a copy and switch over the new server to the destination subscription

Sample code is available on technet

The code is self explanatory, however in the interest of SO best practices,

Key portions of the code are

Create a new server:

$newserver = New-AzureSqlDatabaseServer -Location $targetServerLocation -AdministratorLogin $targetServerLoginID -AdministratorLoginPassword $targetServerLoginPassword

Create a database copy:

Start-AzureSqlDatabaseCopy -ServerName $sourceServerName -DatabaseName $sourceDatabaseName -PartnerServer $newserver.ServerName  -PartnerDatabase $targetdatabaseName

Transfer the server

$uri = "https://management.core.windows.net:8443/" + $sourceSubscriptionID + "/services" + "/sqlservers/servers/" + $newserver.ServerName + "?op=ChangeSubscription" 

Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $uri -CertificateThumbPrint $certThumbprint -ContentType $contenttype -Method $method -Headers $headers -Body $body

Problem

We are about to split our testing and production instances in Windows Azure into two separate subscriptions. Currently we have 3 Windows Azure SQL Database instances that reside within the same subscription: - Production - Reporting - Testing In order to completely isolate production we are splitting these into: - Production Subscription - Production - Reporting - Testing Subscription - Testing At the moment we use the `CREATE DATABASE X AS COPY OF [ServerName].Y` command to copy databases from production to testing before we obfuscate the live data. This operation can be performed so long as the databases are geo-located in the same data centre and we have a shared login across the instances that created the database in the first place (As indicated by this article). However; the article does not indicate whether the source and destination instance need to belong to the same subscription. Are we able to copy the database between the production subscription and testing subscription (And vica verca) assuming we use a consistent login?

Original source