Azure: How to move databases into Elastic Pool

Question

We have a few databases in Pricing Tier: Basic, S0... like below picture:

These databases were created before a new Elastic Pool is created. Now we want to move these databases into Elastic Pool for costing saving. But it seems I don't know how to move them on the Azure portal.

Answer 1

You can create an elastic pool in the same server as your databases, through portal using instructions here - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/sql-database-elastic-pool-create-portal/

Once you have created a pool, you can add existing databases to the pool using instructions here - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/sql-database/sql-database-elastic-pool#manage-an-elastic-pool-and-its-databases

Let us know if you have any further questions here.

-- srini

Answer 2

Fast answer if don't want to read any link, you just want do OP asked:

1. Go to Elastic Pool
2. Select Configure (yes, there where you have the options to scale the pool)
3. Behind the tier specification you have three tabs "Pool settings", "Databases" and "Per database settings". Go to "Databases".
4. Just add/remove databases in/out of the pool
5. Don't forget to hit Save to apply all changes you made.

⚠ Take in mind that all databases you want to add to the pool should be in the same Server than the pool.

Answer 3

I found the Microsoft page to be unclear on the actual steps of moving existing Azure SQL Databases to the Elastic Pool.

I wrote this paper to explain the steps, how to assign existing databases to the pool (from the Elastic Pool side), and preserve the existing SQL Server connection strings. That's critical to avoid recoding and testing all the applications that may be dependent on the databases that are moved.

http://fmsinc.com/microsoft-azure/sql-server/pooled/index.htm

Note that the pool only applies to one server, so you can't combine databases from multiple servers into one Elastic Pool account.

Hope this helps.