Has anyone come up with a good way to do backups of SQL Azure databases?
The two approaches seem to be SSIS or BCP. SSIS looks like it requires a local install of MS SQL 2008 which I don't have. BCP looks a bit more promising but I haven't managed to find any examples of using it with SQL Azure as of yet.
At the PDC09 they announced SQL Azure Data Sync, which was an early preview that is designed to let you keep your local SQL Server in sync with an Azure SQL Server.
In terms of database backups for maintenance etc, then of course that is part of the service you pay for with Azure that MS manage.
The sync framework team have a blog on a number of issues surrounding data syncronisation between Azure and a local DB - http://blogs.msdn.com/sync/default.aspx
I spent some time with BCP and got it working acceptably. It's a bit annoying to have to do the backup/restore table-by-table but I'll script it and that will do until Microsoft bring in a proper SQL Azure backup feature which is supposedly going to be the first half of 2010.
Backup:
bcp mydb.dbo.customers out customers.dat -n -U user@azureserver -P pass -S tcp:azureserver.database.windows.net
Restore:
bcp mydb.dbo.customers in customers.dat -n -U user@azureserver -P pass -S tcp:azureserver.database.windows.net
I'm using www.sqlscripter.com to generate insert/update data scripts (to sync my local db). Not for free (shareware) but worth to try.