Replicate SQL Server 2008 across domains
nick-mcdermaid: I can tell you that I've set up a push replication from on-prem SQL Server (2008) to Azure SQL. The snapshot took a while but didn't appear to cause any issues.

The subsequent transactional replication worked, but due to the batch load nature of the source, we kept running out of log space and we could not keep it running. So as long as changes to the database are consistent (and you don't have huge spikes of huge amounts of activity) it should work fine.

Cross domain is only relevant if you want to use Windows Authentication. Since Azure SQL doesn't support windows authentication, just plan to use SQL authentication.


  I could do on-prem SQL 2008 directly to Azure? And then on go live - simply stop the replication? I'd need to do more to the source database to make it a stand-alone? Or do I just remove replication - setup users and I’m good to go? I’d obviously do dry runs on a separate test environment - but the idea is do-able? We don’t have huge data spikes at all. It’s a database with only a few concurrent users. Less than 10.


It’s completely doable. You just have to do push subscription from on-prem using SQL authentication. But first be aware of the major gotchas of migrating to SQL Azure. Three obvious ones:


No windows authentication
No cross database calls
No ability to restore from BAK (not a problem for you)


Transactional Replication to Azure SQL DB now in public preview