As a part of our dedication to making sure that Microsoft Azure is one of the best place to run SQL Server and Windows Server, Microsoft is happy to announce that SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines simply achieved new, quicker efficiency benchmarks than ever earlier than. According to a report from analyst agency GigaOm, prospects can get mission-critical efficiency for SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines as much as 57 % quicker and costing as much as 54 % much less than AWS EC2 on a price-performance foundation, with Azure Hybrid Benefit and a three-year dedication.1 As Pam Lahoud wrote, this regular improve in efficiency and worth is the results of an ongoing collection of investments within the core Azure infrastructure, together with the Ebdsv5 digital machine (VM) collection which are optimized in your database workloads and new Premium SSD v2 Disk Storage that brings you quicker efficiency than earlier than, as much as 70 % quicker than a yr in the past. But nice {hardware} isn’t all we’ve in your SQL Server—Azure additionally has unmatched worth affords, distinctive Windows Server and SQL Server manageability options, and instruments and packages to get your workload to the cloud.
Azure offers probably the most worth in your Windows Server and SQL Server workloads with distinctive capabilities and affords that can help you save prices, time, and scale back complexity to do extra with much less. You can save as much as 85 % over the usual pay-as-you-go price leveraging Windows Server and SQL Server licenses with Azure Hybrid Benefit when migrating to Azure digital machines. Not solely can we enable you to save while you transfer, however we wish to enable you to optimize your workloads in Azure. You can get probably the most out of Azure on an ongoing foundation with suggestions to optimize your workloads and prices with Azure Advisor.
In addition, prospects can buy Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instances to lock in one of the best pricing on a particular digital machine occasion collection for a one- or three-year interval. If you want flexibility for dynamic workloads, think about the brand new Azure financial savings plan for compute, a versatile pricing mannequin that unlocks financial savings while you decide to spending a hard and fast hourly quantity on choose compute providers for one or three years. Save no matter area, occasion collection, or working system. Learn extra within the Azure saving plan for compute announcement weblog.
Azure offers unmatched manageability for Windows Server and SQL Server. By registering your SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines with SQL IaaS Agent Extension, you may entry a plethora of advantages: decrease complete value of possession (TCO), strong and easy excessive availability/catastrophe restoration (HA/DR), and built-in and free safety and manageability. Registering SQL Server digital machines lets you change between pay-as-you-go licenses or utilizing Azure Hybrid Benefit to deliver SQL Server licenses from on-premises to Azure instantly inside the Azure portal. Registration additionally simplifies the advanced administrative activity of Always On availability group deployment and lets you use the catastrophe restoration license sort, which is included together with your Azure Hybrid Benefit or pay-as-you-go licensed main SQL Server occasion. Optional automated backup might be configured with backup encryption, configurable retention interval, and customized backup schedules. You may also arrange automated SQL Server safety updates inside customer-defined upkeep home windows and straightforward configuration of database encryption by way of Azure Key Vault integration, each of which let you handle your patching to raised meet your safety and compliance wants.
Save hours of day-to-day IT overhead for Windows Server purposes and information by simplifying IT administration with Azure Automanage. Further improve effectivity and workload uptime by way of reboot-less patching of Windows Server VMs with Hotpatch, out there solely on Azure.
Azure has digital machine and storage {hardware} designed in your most important SQL Server workloads. Azure Ev5 VMs are designed for memory-intensive, business-critical purposes, relational database servers, and in-memory information analytics workloads. The Ebdsv5 collection of VMs, a part of the Ev5 household, are perfect for database and different I/O-intensive workloads as a result of they provide larger distant storage throughput and IOPS per vCPU than another VM collection in Azure. We not too long ago added to this lineup Azure Premium SSD v2, the subsequent technology of Premium SSD Disk Storage that provides probably the most superior general-purpose block storage answer with one of the best worth efficiency. Premium SSD v2 affords sub-millisecond disk latencies for demanding IO-intensive workloads at a low value.
Azure has nice locations for modernizing SQL Server. Azure SQL Managed Instance is a managed, all the time up-to-date SQL occasion within the cloud, and it makes an incredible vacation spot for database modernization in Azure. It has nice efficiency as properly: as I’ve talked about beforehand, SQL Managed Instance has as much as 5 occasions quicker efficiency whereas costing as much as 93 % lower than AWS RDS.2 Spend extra time innovating and fewer time patching, updating, and backing up your databases and notice as much as 40 % quicker time to worth.3 The hyperlink characteristic of Azure SQL Managed Instance connects SQL Servers hosted wherever (supporting SQL Server 2019 and SQL Server 2022) to Azure SQL Managed Instance, offering hybrid flexibility and database mobility. Using close to real-time information replication to the cloud, shift workloads to read-only secondaries on Azure to make the most of cloud-only options, efficiency, and scale. You may also select emigrate a number of purposes on the similar time, at your personal tempo, with minimal downtime.
Azure affords free instruments earlier than, throughout, and after migration. Automate the transfer, achieve rightsizing insights to drive efficiencies, and keep optimized after the transfer: Azure Migrate and Azure Database Migration Service present built-in discovery, evaluation, migration, and modernization capabilities for SQL Server and Windows Server workloads, together with extensibility options for ISV software integration. Reduce your migration prices and speed up your journey with knowledgeable assist from Microsoft and companions by way of the Azure Migration and Modernization Program. The new Microsoft SQL + Apps Migration Factory Program may help you assess and migrate qualifying low-complexity SQL Server and Windows Server purposes and databases to Azure for free of charge to you.4
Getting began with SQL Server on Azure
- Read the full benchmark report for SQL Transaction Processing and Analytic Performance Price-Performance Testing.
- Watch and study with Microsoft Mechanics: Best possibility for Database Migration into Azure.
- Learn extra about saving time and enhancing safety by registering your SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines from this datasheet and our documentation.
- Accelerate your modernization with our on-demand webinar: How to Migrate SQL Server from VM to SQL Managed Instance.
1 Price-performance claims based mostly on information from a examine commissioned by Microsoft and performed by GigaOm in January 2023. The examine in contrast worth efficiency between SQL Server 2019 Enterprise Edition on Windows Server 2022 in Azure E32bds_v5 occasion sort with Premium SSD v2 disks and SQL Server 2019 Enterprise Edition on Windows Server 2022 in Amazon Web Services Elastic Cloud Compute occasion sort r5b.8xlarge with General Purpose (gp3) volumes. Benchmark information is taken from a GigaOm Transactional Field Test derived from a acknowledged trade normal, TPC Benchmark™ E (TPC-E) The Field Test doesn’t implement the complete TPC-E and as such isn’t similar to any revealed TPC-E benchmarks. Prices are based mostly on publicly out there US pricing in East US for SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines and Oregon for AWS EC2 as of January 2023. The pricing incorporates three-year reservations for Azure and AWS compute pricing, and Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server and Windows Server, and License Mobility for SQL Server in AWS, excluding Software Assurance and assist prices. Actual outcomes and costs could fluctuate based mostly on configuration and area.
2 Price-performance claims based mostly on information from a examine commissioned by Microsoft and performed by Principled Technologies in April 2022. The examine in contrast efficiency and worth efficiency between a 16 vCore, 64 vCore and 80 vCore Azure SQL Managed Instance utilizing premium-series {hardware} on the business-critical service tier and the db.m6i.32xlarge, db.r5b.4xlarge and db.r5b.16xlarge choices for Amazon Web Services Relational Database Service (AWS RDS) on SQL Server. Benchmark information is taken from a Principled Technologies report utilizing acknowledged requirements, HammerDB TPROC-C, HammerDB TPROC-H and Microsoft MSOLTPE, a workload derived from TPC-E. The MSOLTPE is derived from the TPC-E benchmark and as such isn’t similar to revealed TPC-E outcomes, as MSOLTPE outcomes don’t adjust to the TPC-E Specification. The outcomes are based mostly on a mix of read-only and replace intensive transactions that simulate actions present in advanced OLTP and analytics software environments. Price-performance is calculated by Principled Technologies as the price of working the cloud platform repeatedly divided by transactions per minute or per second throughput, based mostly upon the usual. Prices are based mostly on publicly out there US pricing in South Central US for Azure SQL Managed Instance and US East for AWS RDS as of April 2022 and incorporates Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server, excluding Software Assurance and assist prices. Performance and price-performance outcomes are based mostly upon the configurations detailed within the Principled Technologies report. Actual outcomes and costs could fluctuate based mostly on configuration and area.
3 Results are based mostly on prospects interviews. “The Economic Value of Migration On-premises SQL Server Instances to Microsoft Azure SQL Solutions,” a commissioned examine performed by The Enterprise Strategy Group on behalf of Microsoft, October 2020.
4 Subject to the constraints described within the full SQL + Apps Migration Factory program specs right here, and offered that the SQL Server workloads are low complexity with no code modifications, Microsoft agrees to evaluate and migrate SQL Server databases and SQL Server-associated purposes out of your datacenter or AWS EC2 to Azure for free of charge to buyer. Migrations have to be accomplished by June 30, 2023.