Provision an Ubuntu virtual machine running SQL Server in Azure¶

This documentation is based on the Ubuntu tutorial for creating Linux virtual machines with the Azure CLI.

Prerequisites¶

A Microsoft Azure account
A Resource Group

Launch an Ubuntu VM with SQL Server installed¶

Find the correct image to launch on the Azure portal¶

Sign in to the Azure portal.
In the left pane, select “Create a resource”.
In the search box, type “SQL 2019 on Ubuntu Pro”, and submit the search.
Select the image by the name “SQL 2019 on Ubuntu Pro 20.04 LTS with 24x7 Support”.
Select “Create” on the appropriate image from the list.

Launch the VM¶

Select your Subscription and Resource Group.
In “Virtual machine name”, enter a name for your new VM.
Then, type or select the following values:
1. Region: Select the Azure region that’s right for you.
2. Availability options: Choose the availability and redundancy option that’s best for your apps and data.
3. Change size: Select this option to pick a machine size and when done, choose Select.
4. Authentication type: Select “SSH public key”.
5. SSH public key: Enter your RSA public key.
6. Public inbound ports: Choose “Allow selected ports” and pick the SSH (22) port in the “Select public inbound ports” list. In this tutorial, this step is necessary to connect and complete the SQL Server configuration. If you want to remotely connect to SQL Server, you will need to manually allow traffic to the default port (1433) used by Microsoft SQL Server for connections over the Internet after the virtual machine is created.
Make any changes you want to the settings in the following additional steps or keep the default settings.
1. Disks
2. Networking
3. Management
4. Guest config
5. Tags
Select “Review + create”.
In the “Review + create” pane, select “Create”.

Config and connect¶

Connect to the VM¶

Find the IP address of your VM in the portal, Overview section.
Connect to the Azure VM using the ssh command. In the following command, replace the VM user name and IP address to connect to your Linux VM.

ssh [email protected]

Change the System Administrator password¶

The new virtual machine installs SQL Server with a random System Administrator password. Reset this password before you connect to SQL Server with the System Administrator login.

Change the System Administrator password with the following commands:

sudo systemctl stop mssql-server
sudo /opt/mssql/bin/mssql-conf set-sa-password

Enter a new System Administrator password and password confirmation when prompted.
Restart the SQL Server service.

sudo systemctl start mssql-server

Add the tools to your path (optional)¶

Several SQL Server packages are installed by default, including the SQL Server command-line tools package. The tools package contains the sqlcmd and bcp tools. For convenience, you can add the tools path, /opt/mssql-tools/bin/, to your PATH environment variable.

Run the following commands to modify the PATH for both login sessions and interactive/non-login sessions:

echo 'export PATH="$PATH:/opt/mssql-tools/bin"' >> ~/.bash_profile
echo 'export PATH="$PATH:/opt/mssql-tools/bin"' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Configure for remote connections¶

In order to remotely connect to SQL Server on the Azure VM, you must configure an inbound rule on the network security group. The rule allows traffic on the port on which SQL Server listens (default of 1433).

In the portal, select “Virtual machines”, and then select your SQL Server VM.
In the left navigation pane, under Settings, select “Networking”.
In the Networking window, select “Add inbound port” under “Inbound Port Rules”.
In the Service list, select “MS SQL”.
Click OK to save the rule for your VM.

Open the firewall¶

If you want to connect remotely to VMs, you also have to open up port 1433 on the Linux firewall.

Connect to your VM.
In a terminal, run the following command:

sudo ufw allow 1433/tcp

Connect¶

You can now connect to your server from your favourite client.