Evaluate the functional benefits/impact of possible database offerings
In this we will learn about functional benefits/impact of possible database offerings in Azure SQL. However, Azure SQL is a family of managed, secure, and intelligent products that use the SQL Server database engine in the Azure cloud. It is built upon the familiar SQL Server engine, so you can migrate applications with ease and continue to use the tools, languages, and resources you’re familiar with.
Overview
In today’s data-driven world, driving digital transformation increasingly depends on our ability to manage massive amounts of data and harness its potential. But today’s data estates are increasingly complex, with data hosted on-premises, in the cloud, or at the edge of the network. However, developers who are building intelligent and immersive applications can find themselves constrained by limitations that can ultimately impact their experience. And, one of the first things to understand in any discussion of Azure versus on-premises SQL Server databases is that you can use it all.
Fully managed and always up to date
Spend more time innovating and less time patching, updating, and backing up your databases. Moreover, 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. Even complex tasks like performance tuning, high availability, disaster recovery, and backups are automated, freeing you to focus on applications.
Protect your data with built-in intelligent security
Azure constantly monitors your data for threats. With Azure SQL, you can:
- Firstly, remediate potential threats in real time with intelligent advanced threat detection and proactive vulnerability assessment alerts.
- Secondly, get industry-leading, multi-layered protection with built-in security controls including T-SQL, authentication, networking, and key management.
- Lastly, take advantage of the most comprehensive compliance coverage of any cloud database service.
Business motivations
There are several factors that can influence your decision to choose between the different data offerings:
- Firstly, Cost: Both PaaS and IaaS option include base price that covers underlying infrastructure and licensing. However, with IaaS option you need to invest additional time and resources to manage your database. While in PaaS you get these administration features included in the price. IaaS enables you to shut down resources while you are not using them to decrease the cost. And, while PaaS is always running unless you drop and re-create your resources when they are needed.
- Secondly, Administration: PaaS options reduce the amount of time that you need to invest to administer the database. However, it also limits the range of custom administration tasks and scripts that you can perform or run. For example, the CLR is not supported with SQL Database. But is supported for an instance of SQL Managed Instance. Also, no deployment options in PaaS support the use of trace flags.
- Thirdly, Service-level agreement: Both IaaS and PaaS provide high, industry standard SLA. PaaS option guarantees 99.99% SLA, while IaaS guarantees 99.95% SLA for infrastructure, meaning that you need to implement additional mechanisms to ensure availability of your databases.
- Lastly, Time to move to Azure: SQL Server on Azure VM is the exact match of your environment. So, that migration from on-premises to the Azure VM is no different than moving the databases from one on-premises server to another. Moreover, SQL Managed Instance also enables easy migration; however, there might be some changes that you need to apply before your migration.
Azure SQL 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).
- Firstly, best for modern cloud applications that want to use the latest stable SQL Server features and have time constraints in development and marketing.
- Secondly, a fully managed SQL Server database engine, based on the latest stable Enterprise Edition of SQL Server. SQL Database has two deployment options built on standardized hardware and software that is owned, hosted, and maintained by Microsoft.
Azure SQL Database offers the following deployment options:
- Firstly, as a single database with its own set of resources managed via a logical SQL server. A single database is similar to a contained database in SQL Server. T
- Secondly, an elastic pool, which is a collection of databases with a shared set of resources managed via a logical SQL server. Single databases can be moved into and out of an elastic pool.
SQL Server on Azure VM
SQL Server on Azure VM falls into the industry category Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and allows you to run SQL Server inside a fully managed virtual machine (VM) in Azure.
- Firstly, best for migrations and applications requiring OS-level access. SQL virtual machines in Azure are lift-and-shift ready for existing applications that require fast migration to the cloud with minimal changes or no changes.
- Secondly, rapid development and test scenarios when you do not want to buy on-premises non-production SQL Server hardware. SQL virtual machines also run on standardized hardware that is owned, hosted, and maintained by Microsoft.
- Thirdly, SQL Server installed and hosted in the cloud runs on Windows Server or Linux virtual machines running on Azure. This is also known as an infrastructure as a service (IaaS).
- Lastly, optimized for migrating existing applications to Azure or extending existing on-premises applications to the cloud in hybrid deployments. In addition, you can use SQL Server in a virtual machine to develop and test traditional SQL Server applications. With SQL virtual machines, you have the full administrative rights over a dedicated SQL Server instance and a cloud-based VM.
Billing and licensing basics
Currently, both SQL Database and SQL Managed Instance are sold as a service and are available with several options and in several service tiers with different prices for resources, all of which are billed hourly at a fixed rate based on the service tier and compute size you choose.
- However, with SQL Database, you can choose a service tier that fits your needs from a wide range of prices. And you can create elastic pools to share resources among databases to reduce costs and accommodate usage spikes.
- Secondly, with SQL Managed Instance, you can also bring your own license.
Administration
For many businesses, the decision to transition to a cloud service is as much about offloading complexity of administration as it is cost. Moreover, with IaaS and PaaS, Azure administers the underlying infrastructure and automatically replicates all data. This is to provide disaster recovery, configures and upgrades the database software and manages load balancing. This also does transparent failover if there is a server failure within a data center.
- Firstly, with SQL Database and SQL Managed Instance, you can continue to administer your database, but you no longer need to manage the database engine, the operating system, or the hardware. Examples of items you can continue to administer include databases and logins, index and query tuning, and auditing and security.
- Secondly, with SQL on Azure VM, you have full control over the operating system and SQL Server instance configuration. With a VM, it’s up to you to decide when to update/upgrade the operating system and database software.
Time to move to Azure
Azure SQL Database is the right solution for cloud-designed applications when developer productivity and fast time-to-market for new solutions are critical. Moreover, with programmatic DBA-like functionality, it is perfect for cloud architects and developers as it lowers the need for managing the underlying operating system and database.
SQL on Azure VM is perfect if your existing or new applications 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.
Reference: Microsoft Documentation