Azure Database Services for Scalable and Secure Data Management

Azure Database Services offers a range of scalable and secure data management options for businesses. These services are designed to meet the needs of companies of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises.

With Azure Database Services, you can choose from a variety of database engines, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server. This flexibility allows you to use the database engine that best suits your application's needs.

One of the key benefits of Azure Database Services is its ability to scale quickly and easily. This means that your database can grow with your business, without the need for costly upgrades or manual scaling.

Azure SQL offers advanced security, making it a reliable choice for storing sensitive data.

You can scale up instances and increase performance with a premium availability model.

With Azure SQL Database, you can scale out by adding database units or sharding, a process of horizontal partitioning that makes database management faster and easier.

You can define the amount of resources assigned to your database, giving you control over its performance. Dynamic scaling allows you to scale up or down without downtime, so you can adjust performance without affecting your app or customers.

With single databases, you can dynamically scale resources up to 128 vCores and 4 TB of storage. This option also provides fast backup and restore capabilities. In contrast, elastic pools allow you to assign shared resources to all databases in the pool.

Dynamic scaling is different from autoscaling, which is automatic scaling based on criteria. Dynamic scaling allows for manual scaling without downtime, making it a great option for those who want more control over their database's performance.

You can use the serverless tier, which provides autoscaling, or use scripts to schedule or automate scalability for a single database. Elastic pools also allow for scaling with custom scripts, giving you more flexibility in managing your database's performance.

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Here are the key benefits of dynamic scaling:

Automatic performance monitoring and tuning can also help you optimize your database's performance. SQL Database provides detailed insights into queries and adapts your database schema to your workload, making it easier to manage a huge number of databases.

Using Azure SQL can provide numerous benefits, from reliability to advanced security.

One of the biggest benefits is its reliability, which is ensured by Azure's robust infrastructure and automatic failover capabilities.

Azure SQL also offers advanced security features, including encryption at rest and in transit, and multi-factor authentication.

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Azure's built-in intelligent security constantly monitors your data for threats. It provides real-time remediation for potential threats with intelligent advanced threat detection and proactive vulnerability assessment alerts.

Azure SQL Database offers industry-leading, multi-layered protection with built-in security controls including T-SQL, authentication, networking, and key management. This comprehensive compliance coverage is unmatched by any cloud database service.

For added security, Azure SQL Database includes advanced threat protection with Microsoft Defender for SQL, which provides a unified package for advanced SQL security capabilities. This includes vulnerability assessment and threat detection features.

Here are some key security features of Azure SQL Database:

Auditing is a crucial aspect of maintaining regulatory compliance and ensuring the security of your database.

It tracks database events and writes them to an audit log in your Azure storage account.

This helps you understand database activity, identify discrepancies and anomalies, and gain insight into potential security violations.

Auditing can also provide valuable information for compliance purposes, helping you meet regulatory requirements.

You can configure auditing to track various events, such as login attempts, data modifications, and database access.

Auditing for compliance and security is a key feature of Azure SQL Database, allowing you to maintain a secure and compliant database.

Here are some key benefits of auditing for compliance:

Azure SQL Database offers two distinct database backup options: Point in Time Restore (PITR) and long-term retention (LTR) policies.

With PITR, you can save a dynamically-sized history of databases with configurable retention periods, allowing you to fall back to a full version of your database as far as a month in the past in case of mistakes or failures.

Backup storage is supported for free by Azure in intervals of 7 to 35 days, giving you peace of mind knowing your data is secure.

You can also set up LTR policies to preserve backups for as long as 10 years, with various options for scheduling and retention periods.

If you need more granular or longer-term data retention, you can pay for expanded storage, providing you with even more protection for your data.

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Azure SQL Database promises virtually no downtime, with a stated goal of 99.99% availability. This is thanks to its high availability architecture, which insures data against failures and relieves users from thinking about maintenance or potential outages.

Microsoft provides an availability SLA of 99.99% for both Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance. This means you can rely on your database being available almost all the time.

Patches and upgrades are automatic and intelligently managed by instances, so you don't have to worry about them. This is a huge time-saver and reduces the risk of human error.

For SQL Server on Azure VMs, Microsoft provides an availability SLA of 99.95% for two virtual machines in an availability set, or 99.99% for two virtual machines in different availability zones. This is still a very high level of availability, but it's worth noting that it doesn't cover the processes running on the VM.

Using a supported high availability option in SQL Server, such as Always On availability groups, can help you achieve >99.99% database availability. However, this doesn't provide an additional SLA.

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Azure SQL Database offers two main purchasing models: the vCore-based model and the DTU-based model. The vCore-based model is great for users who want more control over their resources, as it lets you choose the number of vCores, the amount of memory, and the amount and speed of storage.

You can also use Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server to gain cost savings by leveraging your existing SQL Server licenses with the vCore-based model. The DTU-based model, on the other hand, offers a blend of compute, memory, and I/O resources in three service tiers: General Purpose, Business Critical, and Hyperscale.

The General Purpose service tier is designed for common workloads, offering budget-oriented balanced compute and storage options. The Business Critical service tier is designed for OLTP applications with high transaction rates and low latency I/O requirements, offering the highest resilience to failures by using several isolated replicas.

The Hyperscale service tier is designed for most business workloads, providing great flexibility and high performance with independently scalable compute and storage resources. It also offers higher resilience to failures by allowing configuration of more than one isolated database replica.

You can choose between the provisioned compute tier, which provides a specific amount of compute resource, and the serverless compute tier, which automatically scales compute resources based on workload activity. The serverless compute tier is generally available in the General Purpose service tier and in the Hyperscale service tier.

Here's a summary of the service tiers and compute tiers:

With the DTU-based model, you can also use Elastic Pools to store and manage your data. Elastic Pools are best-suited for databases that have low activity but occasional usage spikes, so the cost savings/DTU reduction of Elastic Pools is dependent on how many of these databases a user can place within them.

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You can manage all your Azure SQL resources, including SQL Server on Azure virtual machines (VMs), from a single page in the Azure portal. To access this page, select Azure SQL from the portal menu or search for it in any page.

The Azure portal provides a quick and easy way to access all your SQL resources, including single and pooled databases in Azure SQL Database, logical servers hosting them, Azure SQL Managed Instances, and SQL Server on Azure VMs. Azure SQL is not a service or resource, but rather a family of SQL-related services.

To manage existing resources, select the desired item in the list, and to create new Azure SQL resources, select + Create. After selecting + Create, view additional information about the different options by selecting Show details on any tile.

Controlling Patching Downtime is crucial for businesses with critical applications. You can configure predictable maintenance window schedules for eligible databases in Azure SQL Database.

The maintenance window feature allows you to specify when patching downtime occurs, giving you control over when your databases are updated. This ensures minimal disruption to your operations.

Maintenance window advance notifications are available for databases configured to use a nondefault maintenance window. This gives you a heads up on when maintenance will occur, so you can plan accordingly.

If you're looking for more control over your database management, consider using Azure SQL Database managed instances. They provide frictionless migration of apps from on-premises to the cloud, along with access to the Azure Resource Manager API for dynamic provisioning.

Here are some options to consider when managing your database downtime:

These features can help you minimize downtime and keep your databases running smoothly. By taking control of your patching schedule, you can ensure that your applications are always available and running efficiently.

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In the Azure portal, you can manage all your Azure SQL resources from a single page, including SQL Server on Azure virtual machines.

To access the Azure SQL page, select Azure SQL from the portal menu or search for it in any page.

Azure SQL provides a quick and easy way to access all your SQL resources, including single and pooled databases in Azure SQL Database, logical servers, Azure SQL Managed Instances, and SQL Server on Azure VMs.

Select the desired item in the list to manage existing resources, or choose + Create to create new Azure SQL resources.

When creating new resources, select Show details on any tile to view additional information about the different options.

You can create the following Azure SQL resources:

With elastic pools, you can allocate performance resources to a pool rather than an individual database, allowing you to scale your app from a handful of databases to thousands within a budget you control.

Managed Instance is a great option for migrating existing on-premises applications to Azure, enabling you to bring migrated database applications to market in Azure quickly.

Azure SQL Managed Instance is a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering that is best for most migrations to the cloud. It's a collection of system and user databases with a shared set of resources that is lift-and-shift ready.

With SQL Managed Instance, you can migrate your on-premises SQL Server instances to Azure with minimal changes. This option provides all of the PaaS benefits of Azure SQL Database but adds additional capabilities, such as native virtual network.

SQL Managed Instance supports database migration from on-premises with minimal to no database changes. It provides full SQL Server access and feature compatibility, making it a great choice for migrating existing applications to Azure.

Here are some key benefits of using Azure SQL Managed Instance:

By choosing Azure SQL Managed Instance, you can simplify the migration process and get your applications up and running in Azure quickly, without the need for extensive re-architecture or re-coding.

Server on VMs is a great option for organizations that want to migrate existing applications to Azure or extend existing on-premises applications to the cloud in hybrid deployments.

SQL Server on Azure VMs allows you to run SQL Server inside a fully managed virtual machine (VM) in Azure. It's a lift-and-shift ready solution for existing applications that require fast migration to the cloud with minimal changes or no changes.

This solution provides full administrative control over the SQL Server instance and underlying OS, making it perfect for migrations and applications that require OS-level access. You can choose when to start maintenance activities, including system updates, and fully customize the SQL Server database engine.

SQL virtual machines also run on standardized hardware that is owned, hosted, and maintained by Microsoft. You can either pay-as-you-go for a SQL Server license already included in a SQL Server image or easily use an existing license.

Here are some key benefits of using SQL Server on Azure VMs:

With SQL virtual machines, you have the full administrative rights over a dedicated SQL Server instance and a cloud-based VM. It's a perfect choice when an organization already has IT resources available to maintain the virtual machines.