Benefits and Features of Azure SQL PaaS

Azure SQL PaaS offers several benefits, including reduced administrative tasks and improved scalability. This allows you to focus on your application and business needs.

One of the key features of Azure SQL PaaS is its ability to automatically patch and update the database engine, eliminating the need for manual maintenance. This ensures that your database is always running with the latest security patches and features.

With Azure SQL PaaS, you can scale your database up or down as needed, without having to worry about provisioning or de-provisioning servers. This flexibility is especially useful during periods of high traffic or usage.

Azure SQL PaaS also provides high availability and disaster recovery capabilities, ensuring that your database is always accessible and recoverable in case of an outage or disaster.

Azure SQL Database offers two deployment options: as a single database with its own set of resources managed via a logical server, or as an elastic pool, which is a collection of databases with a shared set of resources managed via a logical server.

With a single database, you have the flexibility to scale up or out for greater power with no interruption, and you pay-as-you-go. This option is optimized for modern application development of new cloud-born applications.

An elastic pool provides a cost-effective solution for managing the performance of multiple databases that have variable usage patterns. This is particularly useful for modern application development of new cloud-born applications using the multitenant SaaS application pattern.

You can create and manage Azure SQL resources with the Azure portal, which provides a single page where you can manage all of your Azure SQL resources. To access the Azure SQL page, simply select Azure SQL or search for and select Azure SQL in any page.

Here are the Azure SQL deployment options:

Database management is a crucial aspect of any organization's IT infrastructure. Azure SQL Database is a cloud-based database service that allows you to migrate your projects and applications to the cloud with ease.

You can have multiple Azure SQL databases and manage them all more effectively at a lower cost. The maximum size of the Azure SQL Database is now 2TB for a single database.

Azure SQL Database is a relational database-as-a-service (DBaaS) hosted in Azure that falls into the industry category of Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). It's best for modern cloud applications that want to use the latest stable SQL Server features and have time constraints in development and marketing.

Azure SQL Database offers two deployment options: a single database with its own set of resources managed via a logical server, and an elastic pool, which is a collection of databases with a shared set of resources managed via a logical server.

You can create a copy of an existing database and create a new database out of it either in the same SQL server or in a different server. To do this, navigate to the database component you want to create a copy of and click Copy on the toolbar.

Here are the deployment options for Azure SQL Database:

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.

There are two main deployment models to consider when using the Azure platform for SQL databases: single database and elastic pool.

A single database is essentially a contained SQL Server database hosted in the cloud, isolated from other databases and managed via a server.

You can scale up or down resources allocated to a single database as needed, making it a great solution for cloud applications that require a single data source.

Single databases are assigned resources that belong to them only, and resource allocation is not shared with other databases under any service tier.

The elastic pool model, on the other hand, relates to multiple databases with shared resources managed via a logical server.

You can move a single database into an elastic pool or remove it from there whenever you need, making it a flexible solution for multiple databases with varying resource requirements.

The elastic pool allocates necessary resources to individual databases based on their unique and unpredictable resource needs.

The ability to handle resource requirements is measured in eDTUs (elastic Database Transaction Units) for elastic database pools, which are a definite number for a set price.

You pay for the Azure SQL elastic pool as a single whole, not for each separate database, making it a cost-effective solution for multiple databases.

Within the pool, an individual database can consume more eDTUs if the load grows, and when the load is less or absent, no eDTUs are consumed.

The elastic pool specifies storage in GBs, which can be shared between all databases, but you can't exceed this storage limit.

If your databases grow too large and their aggregated size goes beyond the elastic pool storage, all databases become read-only.

Azure SQL Database offers several service tiers to target different workloads, including Basic, Standard (General Purpose), Premium (Business Critical), and HyperScale. Each tier grants you appropriate performance, security, and business continuity.

The Basic service tier is the simplest option that supports one active operation at a time, making it suitable for small and rarely used applications. It's not the most popular choice, so we'll focus on the other tiers.

The Standard (General Purpose) service tier is a default option for both the Database and Managed Instance in Azure SQL. It's a good choice for most cloud apps, with storage size varying from 1GB to 4TB.

The Premium (Business Critical) service tier is designed for powerful applications that demand low-latency responses and fast recovery in case of infrastructure failures. It's ideal for critical business applications.

The Hyperscale service tier offers much more scalable storage with significantly more power for computing, making it suitable for large databases that require high performance and scalability. The size of a database can be up to 100 TB in this tier.

Here's a quick comparison of the service tiers:

Database Export/Import is a crucial process in database management that allows you to export your database schema and data to a BACPAC file, which can then be imported back into Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, or a SQL Server instance.

You can export the database using the Azure Portal by navigating to the particular database resource and clicking Export on the toolbar. This will allow you to provide a BACPAC file name and select a storage account to store the file.

To store the BACPAC file in Azure Blob storage, you should be aware of the 200 GB size limit and the inability to export to premium storage tier using this approach. For larger size databases, it's recommended to export to local storage.

The import time depends on the pricing tier of the database, so it's essential to consider this when planning your export and import process. You'll also need to have the required permissions (SQL Admin) on the SQL Server to perform the export and import operations.

To ensure data consistency and avoid data loss, make sure no write activity is happening during the export process. You can verify the data in the new destination database and ensure it has all the data up to the timestamp when the copy process initiated.

To achieve the export and import operations using alternative methods, you can use PowerShell, Azure CLI, or SQL Package command line utilities. However, please ensure you follow the same guidelines and recommendations as mentioned above for a smooth process.

Azure SQL PaaS prioritizes data safety with its Firewall, preventing unauthorized access to databases and virtual network rules that only allow requests from selected subnets.

Azure constantly monitors your data for threats, providing real-time remediation of potential threats and proactive vulnerability assessment alerts. It also offers multi-layered protection with built-in security controls, including T-SQL, authentication, networking, and key management.

You can receive alerts and email notifications for suspicious activities, SQL attacks, abnormal database access, and query patterns with Advanced Threat Protection.

Here are some key security features to keep in mind:

Azure takes security and compliance very seriously. It has a robust set of features to protect your data and ensure it meets regulatory requirements.

The Firewall is a key component of Azure's security features, preventing unauthorized access to databases. This is achieved through virtual network rules that only allow requests from selected subnets. Azure also tracks malicious activities that threaten database safety and sends alerts to customers.

Azure constantly monitors your data for threats. With Azure SQL, you can remediate potential threats in real time with intelligent advanced threat detection and proactive vulnerability assessment alerts.

Advanced Threat Protection provided by Microsoft Azure delivers a new level of database security. It detects and fixes anomalies and vulnerabilities, and you can receive alerts and email notifications about suspicious activities.

Azure SQL provides encryption for columns through Always Encrypted, allowing only authorized applications access to sensitive columns. This limits SQL queries for encrypted columns to equality-based values.

To restrict access to your database, you can create firewall rules that specify ranges of acceptable IP addresses. This can be targeted at both the server and database levels. We recommend using database-level firewall rules whenever possible to enhance security and make your database more portable.

Here's a quick summary of the key security features in Azure SQL:

Meeting up-time obligations is a top priority for many IT departments, and a service-level agreement (SLA) is a key part of that.

Microsoft provides an availability SLA of 99.99% for both Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance. For the latest information, see Service-level agreement.

For SQL Server on Azure VMs, achieving high availability requires configuration of one of the supported high availability options in SQL Server, such as Always On availability groups. Using a supported high availability option doesn't provide an additional SLA, but allows you to achieve >99.99% database availability.

Having a centralized identity repository is a game-changer for managing database users and permissions. It eliminates the need for storing passwords and allows for password rotation in a single place.

With Microsoft Entra authentication, you can centrally manage the identities of database users and other Microsoft services in one central location. This simplifies permission management and reduces the risk of identity proliferation across database servers.

Microsoft Entra ID provides an alternative to SQL Server authentication, enabling you to manage database users and permissions in a more secure and efficient way. By using contained database users, you can authenticate identities at the database level.

Here are some benefits of using Microsoft Entra ID instead of SQL authentication: