Limitations of Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance

This article describes limitations of Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance.

At this time, the business critical service tier is public preview. The general purpose service tier is generally available.

Backup and restore

Automated backups

  • User databases with SIMPLE recovery model are not backed up.
  • System database model is not backed up in order to prevent interference with creation/deletion of database. The database gets locked when admin operations are performed.

Point-in-time restore (PITR)

  • Doesn't support restore from one Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance to another Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance. The database can only be restored to the same Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance where the backups were created.
  • Renaming of a databases is currently not supported, for point in time restore purposes.
  • No support for restoring a TDE enabled database currently.
  • A deleted database cannot be restored currently.

Other limitations

  • Transactional replication is currently not supported.
  • Log shipping is currently blocked.

Roles and responsibilities

The roles and responsibilities between Microsoft and its customers differ between Azure PaaS services (Platform As A Service) and Azure hybrid (like Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance).

Frequently asked questions

The table below summarizes answers to frequently asked questions regarding support roles and responsibilities.

Question Azure Platform As A Service (PaaS) Azure Arc hybrid services
Who provides the infrastructure? Microsoft Customer
Who provides the software?* Microsoft Microsoft
Who does the operations? Microsoft Customer
Does Microsoft provide SLAs? Yes No
Who’s in charge of SLAs? Microsoft Customer

* Azure services

Why doesn't Microsoft provide SLAs on Azure Arc hybrid services? Because Microsoft does not own the infrastructure and does not operate it. Customers do.

Next steps