Alternatives to SQL Agent for Azure SQL Database

Question

SQL Agent is not available on the Azure SQL Database. What is the recommended way to schedule regular tasks? I found sqlazureagent on codeplex, but I'm interested in what people have used in practice.

Answer 1

• Recent Azure updates have now provided an add-on that can be added to an Azure subscription, and depending on your use, it may be free or cost you a little money.

  • One of these add-ons is from Aditi Tech - Scheduler

  

• In addition, a scheduler has been added to Mobile Services that allows you to create scripts that can run every X minutes, days, hours, or months. This is well described in Create a new scheduled task . In a detailed example, you can refer to Planning for work in Windows Azure

• Depending on your needs, you can even use the Windows Task Scheduler on Azure Virtual Machines. You can use it for scheduling tasks in the same way as on native Windows machines. Below is an example here and here .

• You can use the work role to schedule and complete certain tasks at specific times using the available frameworks, such as:

  • TaskScheduler is available on github.
  • Create a task scheduler in Windows Azure
  • Azure Tool Kit from Codeplex.

Answer 2

I would recommend using the Mobile Service Scheduler inside Azure itself. I searched for this a while ago and came across this great post from Sandrino Di Mattia . Hope this helps.

Answer 3

It depends on what you want to use SQL Agent for. Most of the SQL Agent jobs I've seen in the past have been planning backups or SSIS packages. None of these are related to SQL Azure. Azure SQL backup planning is done through the Azure portal, and SSIS is not used.

Other scheduled maintenance tasks that you might want to complete, such as rebuilding indexes or moving data around, must be manually deployed. I suggest you create a small application using the ASP MVC Web API, which has scripts that you want to execute. You can run it pretty much free, like the Azure site, if you need to. Then call this service from an external scheduler. Keen's answer to your question provides some options. Personally, I use setcronjob , which meets our needs and costs me only $ 10 a year.

Perhaps provide specific examples of what you want to plan in your question so that you can provide answers to specific questions.

Answer 4

If your goal is to schedule stored procedures, our Cotega service might be of interest to you.