This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

We have a number of customers that leverage the benefits offered by the SQL IaaS extension which I had blogged about a few days ago. One of the common feedback was the effort required to enable the extension for multiple VMs especially if you were running multiple SQL Server on Azure VM instances. We have created an easy option for customers to enable the SQL IaaS extensions on all SQL Server virtual machines in an Azure subscription using a feature called Automatic Registration. 


 


To enable automatic registration of your SQL Server VMs in the Azure portal, follow the steps:




  1. Sign into the Azure portal.




  2. Navigate to the SQL virtual machines resource page.




  3. Select Automatic SQL Server VM registration to open the Automatic registration page as shown in the screenshot below.




  4. Choose your subscription from the drop-down.




  5. Read through the terms and if you agree, select I accept.




  6. Select Register to enable the feature and automatically register all current and future SQL Server VMs with the SQL VM resource provider. This will not restart the SQL Server service on any of the VMs.




automatic-registration.png


If you need to enable this option on multiple Azure subscriptions, then you can leverage this PowerShell script on GitHub to enable this option for a list of subscriptions.


 


We also introduced new Reporting Services virtual machine images for SQL Server 2016, 2017 and 2019. Now customers have the ability to deploy a Reporting Services virtual machine (SSRS) using Standard and Enterprise edition using pre-configured image types for ease of deployment. This also introduces the choice to deploy a SSRS virtual machine with flexible licensing model using Pay As You Go pricing or leverage your Software Assurance license mobility or Azure Hybrid Benefit when deploying on an Azure virtual machine.


 


Screenshot 2020-10-15 014718.png


Now you have the ability to move your database engine and reporting workloads into Azure virtual machines using our pre-configured images and automate the entire process using ARM templates. This saves you the time to install reporting services and configure it separately.

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