Unlock Business Potential with Azure SQL Database

Azure SQL Database is a game-changer for businesses looking to scale their operations efficiently. It offers a managed relational database service that can handle large amounts of data and traffic.

With Azure SQL Database, you can expect a 99.99% uptime, ensuring your business stays online and available to customers 24/7. This level of reliability is crucial for businesses that rely on their databases to operate.

One of the key benefits of Azure SQL Database is its ability to automatically scale to meet changing workloads, eliminating the need for manual scaling and reducing costs.

Azure SQL provides a range of advanced security features to protect your data.

With built-in intelligent security, Azure constantly monitors your data for threats and offers real-time remediation with intelligent advanced threat detection and proactive vulnerability assessment alerts.

You can also get industry-leading, multi-layered protection with built-in security controls including T-SQL, authentication, networking, and key management, which is essential for maintaining regulatory compliance.

Azure SQL Database provides a unified package for advanced SQL security capabilities, including vulnerability assessment and threat detection. Vulnerability assessment discovers, tracks, and helps you remediate potential database vulnerabilities, while threat detection continuously monitors your database for suspicious activities and provides immediate security alerts.

SQL Database also helps secure your data by providing encryption for data in motion, at rest, and in use. It uses transport layer security for data in motion, transparent data encryption for data at rest, and Always Encrypted for data in use.

Microsoft Entra integration and multifactor authentication are also available to simplify permission management, enhance security, and support a single sign-in process.

Auditing for Compliance and Security is a critical aspect of maintaining regulatory compliance and understanding database activity. This process tracks database events and writes them to an audit log in your Azure storage account.

Auditing can help you identify potential security threats and anomalies in your database activity. It's a valuable tool for gaining insight into discrepancies and business concerns.

Auditing tracks database events, including user actions, database modifications, and system changes. This provides a clear picture of what's happening in your database.

One of the key benefits of auditing is that it helps you maintain regulatory compliance. By tracking database events, you can ensure that you're meeting the necessary security and compliance requirements.

Auditing can also help you understand database activity and identify potential security threats. This can be especially useful in identifying malicious activity or unauthorized access to your database.

To take advantage of auditing, you can enable it in your Azure SQL Database settings. This will allow you to track database events and write them to an audit log in your Azure storage account.

Here are some key features of auditing in Azure SQL Database:

When choosing a database hosting option, it's essential to consider the Service-Level Agreement (SLA) that comes with it.

For Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance, Microsoft provides an availability SLA of 99.99%. This means that you can expect your database to be available at least 99.99% of the time.

If you're using SQL Server on Azure VMs, the SLA is 99.95% for two virtual machines in an availability set, or 99.99% for two virtual machines in different availability zones. This SLA only covers the virtual machines themselves, not the processes running on them.

To achieve >99.99% database availability, you should configure one of the supported high availability options in SQL Server, such as Always On availability groups.

Here's a comparison of the SLAs for different database hosting options:

By understanding the SLA of your chosen database hosting option, you can make informed decisions about your database's availability and performance.

Long-term retention is a crucial aspect of security and compliance. You can store full backups for up to 10 years using the long-term retention feature, allowing you to restore any backup as a new database.

The cost of long-term retention varies depending on the redundancy level you choose. Here are the prices for different redundancy levels:

With long-term retention, you have the flexibility to choose the redundancy level that best fits your needs.

Business applications with high IO requirements can be hosted on Azure SQL Database Hyperscale, which offers rapid, auto-scaling storage up to 100 TB. This helps optimize database resources for your workload's needs.

To enable zone redundancy, the database must have at least one secondary high availability replica. This is not an additional cost, as it is included in the Business Critical tier.

Storage can be configured between 5 GB and 4 TB with 1 GB increments, and you are charged for local SSD storage that you provision for your database or elastic pool.

Here are the pricing options for the Business Critical tier:

Note that the pricing below is applicable for both primary and secondary (high availability and named) replicas. See the Azure Pricing Calculator for more information.

Azure SQL offers two types of purchase models: vCore and DTU. The vCore-based purchasing model lets you choose the number of vCores, the amount of memory, and the amount and speed of storage.

You can choose a service tier that fits your needs from a wide range of prices starting from $5/month for the Basic tier with SQL Database. You can also create elastic pools to share resources among databases to reduce costs and accommodate usage spikes.

The cost of running your application includes the cost for new development and ongoing administration costs, plus the public cloud platform service costs. This includes SQL Database & SQL Managed Instance pricing, Virtual machine pricing for SQL and for Windows, and Azure Pricing Calculator.

You can save up to 40% by using the Azure Hybrid Benefit calculator with SQL Managed Instance. You can also bring your own license with SQL Managed Instance, making it a cost-effective option.

Here's a breakdown of the pricing options:

You're billed for outgoing Internet traffic at regular data transfer rates, but you can dynamically adjust service tiers and compute sizes to match your application's varied throughput needs.

Cost is a significant factor when deciding how to host your databases, especially for startups or teams with tight budget constraints. Limited funding can drive the decision-making process, making it essential to understand the billing and licensing basics in Azure associated with the Azure SQL family of products.

The cost of running your application includes the cost for new development and ongoing administration costs, plus the public cloud platform service costs. This includes SQL Database & SQL Managed Instance pricing, Virtual machine pricing for SQL and for Windows, and Azure Pricing Calculator.

There are two types of purchase models available in the Azure database: vCore (virtual cores) and DTU (Data Transaction Units). These models offer different pricing options, allowing you to choose the one that best fits your needs.

You can receive discounted rates on Azure to support your ongoing development and testing. This can help you save money on your database hosting costs.

Azure offers a pricing and purchasing options guide that provides a walkthrough of Azure pricing and cost optimization. You can also request a custom proposal to get a better understanding of your costs.

To calculate the total application cost, you'll need to consider the following factors:

Here's a summary of the pricing options:

Keep in mind that you're billed for outgoing Internet traffic at regular data transfer rates. You can dynamically adjust service tiers and compute sizes to match your application's varied throughput needs.

Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server can help you save up to 55% off the costs of running workloads in the cloud. This benefit is available to all vCore-based options: SQL Database Managed Instance, Single Database, and Elastic Pool.

By understanding the pricing options and models available in Azure, you can make informed decisions about your database hosting costs and optimize your budget.

Azure SQL Database offers various service tiers to suit different workloads and budgets. These tiers are designed to provide the right balance of performance, storage, and cost for your database needs.

The vCore-based purchasing model offers 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, providing the highest resilience to failures by using several isolated replicas.

The Hyperscale service tier is designed for most business workloads, offering great flexibility and high performance with independently scalable compute and storage resources.

The DTU-based purchasing model offers two service tiers: Standard and Premium. The Standard service tier is designed for common workloads, offering budget-oriented balanced compute and storage options.

The Premium 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.

Here's a comparison of the service tiers:

The choice of service tier depends on your specific database needs and budget. By understanding the different service tiers and their features, you can make an informed decision that meets your requirements.

Azure SQL Database offers scalable performance and pools, allowing you to define the amount of resources assigned to each database. This means you can dynamically scale resources up and down without downtime.

With single databases, each database is isolated from others and is portable, with its own guaranteed amount of compute, memory, and storage resources. You can get 1 to 128 vCores, or 32 GB to 4 TB, and even scale up to 128 TB with the Hyperscale service tier.

For predictable usage patterns, you can create single databases and dial performance up or down on demand. However, for unpredictable usage patterns, elastic pools are designed to solve this problem by allocating performance resources to a pool rather than an individual database.

Here are the key features of elastic pools:

With elastic pools, you can scale your app from a handful of databases to thousands, all within a budget that you control. You can also use scripts to monitor and scale elastic pools, as shown in the example of using PowerShell to monitor and scale an elastic pool.

To query a table in Azure SQL Database, you'll need to access the Query editor in the Azure portal.

You can do this by selecting the Query editor in the left pane of the page and signing in with the administrator login and password.

If you encounter an error message stating that the client IP address isn't allowed, you can resolve this by selecting the Allow list IP link and trying to sign in again.

Once you've accessed the Query editor, you can expand the Tables folder to view the tables in the database.

In the Query 1 pane, you can enter the SQL code to run a query.

To run the query, select the Run option above the query, and you'll be able to view the results, which will include all the columns for all rows in the table.

With Azure SQL, you can offload the complexity of administration, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business. This is especially true for IaaS and PaaS, where Azure administers the underlying infrastructure and provides disaster recovery, configures and upgrades the database software, manages load balancing, and does transparent failover if there's a server failure within a data center.

You have full control over the operating system and SQL Server instance configuration with SQL Server on Azure VMs. This means you decide when to update/upgrade the operating system and database software and when to install extra software like anti-virus.

Some automated features are provided to simplify patching, backup, and high availability with SQL Server on Azure VMs. You can also control the size of the VM, the number of disks, and their storage configurations. Azure allows you to change the size of a VM as needed.

You can continue to administer your database with SQL Database and SQL Managed Instance, but you no longer need to manage the database engine, operating system, or the hardware. This includes items like databases and logins, index and query tuning, and auditing and security. Configuring high availability to another data center requires minimal configuration and administration.

Here are some of the key administration tasks you can perform with Azure SQL:

With Azure, you can focus on innovating and less time patching, updating, and backing up your databases. Azure is the only cloud with evergreen SQL that automatically applies the latest updates and patches so that your databases are always up to date.

This eliminates end-of-support hassle and frees you to focus on your applications. You can also automate complex tasks like performance tuning, high availability, disaster recovery, and backups.

One of the benefits of Azure is that it automatically replicates all data to provide disaster recovery, configures and upgrades the database software, manages load balancing, and does transparent failover if there's a server failure within a data center.

You can continue to administer your database, but you no longer need to manage the database engine, operating system, or the hardware. This means you can focus on what matters most – your applications.

Here's a breakdown of the benefits of Azure's automated features:

With Azure, you can control the size of the VM, the number of disks, and their storage configurations. You can also change the size of a VM as needed. This gives you the flexibility to scale your resources as your needs change.

The maintenance window feature allows you to configure predictable maintenance window schedules for eligible databases in Azure SQL Database. This means you can plan ahead and schedule maintenance during a time that's convenient for you.

Merging single with pooled databases is a great way to optimize your database management. You can blend single databases with elastic pools to meet the unique needs of your application.

Azure SQL allows you to create a combination of single databases and elastic pools. This flexibility is particularly useful when you have varying performance requirements across different databases.

To create a single database, you can select the "Create a single database" option in the Azure SQL page. For elastic pools, you can choose the "Create an elastic pool" option.

With elastic pools, you can allocate performance resources to a pool rather than an individual database. This approach helps you manage costs and resources more effectively, especially when dealing with unpredictable usage patterns.

You can control the minimum and maximum resources available to databases in the pool, ensuring that no database uses all the pool resources, and every pooled database has a guaranteed minimum amount of resources.

Here are the service tiers for single databases, which can be used to scale up or down based on performance demands:

Monitoring and alerting capabilities are essential for any database administrator. Azure SQL Database provides advanced monitoring and troubleshooting features that help you get deeper insights into workload characteristics.

These features include built-in monitoring capabilities provided by the latest version of the SQL Server database engine, which enable you to find real-time performance insights. PaaS monitoring capabilities provided by Azure also enable you to monitor and troubleshoot a large number of database instances.

Database watcher (preview) enables in-depth, low-latency current and historical monitoring and provides a single-pane-of-glass view of your Azure SQL estate.

The Query Store, a built-in SQL Server monitoring feature, records the performance of your queries in real time, enabling you to identify potential performance issues and top resource consumers.

Automatic tuning and recommendations provide advice on queries with regressed performance and missing or duplicated indexes. Automatic tuning in SQL Database enables you to either manually apply the scripts that can fix the issues or let SQL Database apply the fix.

You can use standard DMVs and XEvents to monitor workload performance.

To efficiently monitor the status of thousands of databases, you can use the built-in performance monitoring and alerting features of SQL Database. These tools enable you to quickly assess the impact of scaling up or down based on your current or projected performance needs.

SQL Database can emit metrics and resource logs for easier monitoring. You can configure SQL Database to store resource usage, workers, and sessions, and connectivity into one of these Azure resources:

Administration is a crucial aspect of managing your Azure SQL resources. With IaaS and PaaS, Azure administers the underlying infrastructure and automatically replicates all data to provide disaster recovery.

You can continue to administer your database, but you no longer need to manage the database engine, operating system, or the hardware with SQL Database and SQL Managed Instance. Examples of items you can continue to administer include databases and logins, index and query tuning, and auditing and security.

With SQL Server on Azure VMs, you have full control over the operating system and SQL Server instance configuration. You can control the size of the VM, the number of disks, and their storage configurations.

Azure allows you to change the size of a VM as needed, which is especially useful if your workload changes. For information, see Virtual Machine and Cloud Service Sizes for Azure.

Here are the key differences between administering SQL Database and SQL Server on Azure VMs:

You can create and manage Azure SQL resources using the Azure portal. To access the Azure SQL page, select Azure SQL from the portal menu or search for it in any page.

The Azure portal provides a single page where you can manage all of your Azure SQL resources, including single and pooled databases in Azure SQL Database, as well as the logical server hosting them, Azure SQL Managed Instances, and SQL Server on Azure VMs.

To create new Azure SQL resources, select + Create in the Azure SQL page. You can then view additional information about the different options by selecting Show details on any tile.

Here are the options you can create:

You can also use elastic pools to maximize resource utilization. With elastic pools, you allocate performance resources to a pool rather than an individual database, and you pay for the collective performance resources of the pool rather than for single database performance.

To use elastic pools, you need to add and remove databases to the pool, scaling your app from a handful of databases to thousands, all within a budget that you control. You can also control the minimum and maximum resources available to databases in the pool, to ensure that no database in the pool uses all the pool resources, and that every pooled database has a guaranteed minimum amount of resources.

You can manage existing resources by selecting the desired item in the list, and you can create new resources by selecting + Create in the Azure SQL page.

Storage costs are based on actual allocation in the Hyperscale tier, with a dynamic range of 10 GB to 100 TB, incrementing in 10 GB steps.

You'll be charged for storage based on your database's actual allocation, not a fixed amount. This means you only pay for what you use.

Seven days of backups are stored in RA-GRS Standard blob storage by default. This allows for easy restoration of corrupted or deleted databases to any point in time within the seven-day period.

Backup storage consumption is charged in GB/month and depends on the rate of change of your database and the configured retention period. To monitor and manage backup costs, you can learn more about automated backups.

Storage redundancy options include LRS, ZRS, RA-GRS, and RA-GZRS, each with a specific price per GB/month. Here's a quick rundown of the prices:

Extra storage is only available in the Standard and Premium service tiers.

To delete a database in Azure SQL using the Azure Portal, you'll need to log in to the Azure Portal with your credentials.

Navigate to the Azure SQL instance that contains the database you want to delete.

Click on the “Databases” option on the left-hand side of the page.

Select the database you want to delete from the list of databases.

Confirm the deletion by clicking on the “Yes” button.

Azure SQL Database offers a range of features that simplify database management. Scalable resources allow you to adjust resources to match demand, ensuring optimal performance without downtime.

With built-in high availability, you can benefit from redundancy and automated backups to minimize the risk of data loss. This means you can rest assured that your data is safe, even in the event of unexpected downtime.

Azure SQL Database provides robust security measures, including encryption, threat detection, and access control. This ensures that your data is secure and protected from unauthorized access.

Intelligent query processing and automated tuning improve performance and efficiency, making it easier to get the insights you need. This feature is especially useful for complex queries that require optimization.

Azure SQL Database seamlessly integrates with existing SQL Server applications, allowing for a smooth transition to the cloud. This means you can migrate your applications with minimal changes, reducing the time and effort required.

Flexible pricing models allow you to pay for only what you use, optimizing costs for varying workloads. This means you can scale your resources up or down as needed, without incurring unnecessary costs.

Here are some of the key services offered by Azure SQL Database:

Azure SQL Database also offers serverless compute and Hyperscale storage resources that automatically scale, allowing you to optimize costs without worrying about resource management. This means you can focus on building applications that scale with your business, without the hassle of managing resources.

The Azure SQL architecture is divided into four main layers: Client Layer, Service Layer, Platform Layer, and Infrastructure Layer. Each layer plays a crucial role in ensuring seamless communication and interaction between client applications and database servers.

The Client Layer is where applications connect to and communicate with the database service. It comes equipped with utilities like PHP extensions, ADO.NET, ODBC, and SQL Server Management Studio, making it easier to transfer data between SQL databases and applications.

The Service Layer manages provisioning, billing, and connection routing, acting as a go-between for the client and platform layers. It ensures seamless communication and interaction by validating requests, authenticating users, and creating secure connections between client applications and database servers.

The Platform Layer hosts Azure SQL Server computers, also known as data nodes, within the data center. To provide redundancy, each SQL Database is housed on a node and replicated across many physical servers, ensuring data consistency and dependability.

The Infrastructure Layer manages the hardware and operating system below it, overseeing the provisioning, maintenance, and distribution of resources for the hardware that supports Azure SQL Database. This layer provides crucial support for the platform and service layers to operate at their best.

The Azure SQL architecture is designed to provide scalability, performance, and security, making it a reliable choice for businesses and organizations.

Zone Redundant is a great option for enhanced availability, automatically replicating data across the availability zones within a region.

This option incurs an additional cost, so it's essential to factor that into your budget.

The standard-series (Gen 5) logical CPU is based on Intel E5-2673 v4 (Broadwell) 2.3 GHz processors and Intel Xeon Platinum 8272CL 2.5 GHz (Cascade Lake) processors.

1 vCore equals 1 hyper thread in the standard-series (Gen 5), making it suitable for most relational database servers.

Zone redundancy is a valuable feature, especially for applications that require high uptime and low data loss.

Architecture is the backbone of any system, and Azure SQL Database is no exception. It has four distinct layers that work together to provide a robust and scalable solution.

The Client Layer is the first point of contact between applications and the database service. It comes with utilities like PHP extensions, ADO.NET, ODBC, and SQL Server Management Studio.

The Service Layer is responsible for managing provisioning, billing, and connection routing. It validates requests, authenticates users, and creates secure connections between client applications and database servers.

The Platform Layer hosts Azure SQL Server computers, also known as data nodes, within the data center. Each SQL Database is housed on a node and replicated across many physical servers.

The Infrastructure Layer oversees the hardware and operating system, ensuring they are properly administered. It manages the provisioning, maintenance, and distribution of resources for the hardware that supports Azure SQL Database.

Here are the four layers in Azure SQL Architecture, summarized for easy reference:

Active geo-replication is a feature in SQL Database that lets you create a continuously synchronized readable geo-secondary database for a primary database.

Both the primary and geo-secondary databases must have the same service tier. It's also recommended that the geo-secondary is configured with the same backup storage redundancy and compute size as the primary.

Each geo-secondary is billed at the same price as a primary database with the same configuration. This means you won't pay extra for having a secondary database.

Backups are always taken on the primary database, not the secondary. If the secondary has a different backup storage redundancy, new backups will be stored and billed according to the type of storage selected on the new primary.

A geo-secondary can be a single database or a database in an elastic pool. In an elastic pool, multiple databases share a set number of resources at a set price, with billing occurring at the elastic pool level.

Customers can add any number of secondaries to a pool, up to the maximum, without incurring additional charges. This can be a cost-effective way to implement geo-replication.

Azure SQL offers three deployment options for a database: a single database, an elastic pool, or SQL Server on Azure VMs. A single database is ideal for modern cloud applications and microservices that need a single reliable data source.

You can move single databases in and out of an elastic pool, which is a collection of single databases with a shared set of resources. This allows for dynamic scaling with no downtime and built-in intelligent optimization.

Azure SQL Database is currently available in 38 datacenters around the world, so you can run your database in a datacenter near you. This provides global scalability and availability, making it easier to deploy and manage your database.

Azure SQL Database is the right solution for cloud-designed applications when developer productivity and fast time-to-market for new solutions are critical.

You can bring migrated database applications to market in Azure quickly with Azure SQL Managed Instance, which greatly simplifies the migration of existing applications to Azure.

SQL Server on Azure VMs is perfect for applications that require large databases or access to all features in SQL Server or Windows/Linux, and you want to avoid the time and expense of acquiring new on-premises hardware.

This option saves you time and budget on rearchitecting your existing solution, allowing you to focus on migrating all your solutions to Azure and doing performance optimizations required by the Azure platform.

Deployment models for Azure SQL Database are designed to meet the needs of different applications and workloads. You can choose from two main options: a single database and an elastic pool.

A single database represents a fully managed, isolated database. This option is ideal for modern cloud applications and microservices that require a single reliable data source.

Elastic pool, on the other hand, is a collection of single databases that share a set of resources such as CPU or memory. Single databases can be moved into and out of an elastic pool as needed.

Azure SQL Database offers predictable performance with multiple resource types, service tiers, and compute sizes. This allows you to scale your database resources without worrying about downtime or performance issues.

You can choose from various resource types, service tiers, and compute sizes to meet the specific needs of your application. This flexibility helps you optimize your database performance and reduce costs.

Here are the main deployment options for Azure SQL Database:

SQL Database is currently available in 38 datacenters around the world, providing global scalability and availability.