Azure: Federations have been deprecated, so how to implement 'custom sharding'?

Question

I logged into Azure at the weekend to set up a basic federated database structure, and discovered that Federations have been deprecated.

I contacted Microsoft Customer Support who advised I should implement custom sharding for sclaing the database. However, I can't find any guidance on MS website for recommended approaches to this. The only article i've discovered references custom sharding but doesn't go into detail on how to approach this: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn495641.aspx.

I'm an Azure newbie, and i'm just looking to set up a basic 4 table relational database, pump a load of data into it and then run queries against the db to look at the performance - if anyone can advise on a suitable approach (a tutorial would be perfect) to custom sharding i'd be hugely grateful.

Appreciate any help anyone can offer. Regards, Jon

Answer 1

Jon, See a session here - the referenced sample library should be available soon:

SQL Database Sharding Patterns: http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Data-Exposed/SqlDbShardingIntro

-Simon.

Answer 2

Check out the Elastic Database Tools features of Azure SQL DB, which have been released to replace Federations. A comprehensive set of documentation can be found here along with a 5-minute getting started example here.