Azure SQL makes it easy to move to the cloud

The Azure SQL managed database instance will help you move local SQL Server applications to the cloud. Microsoft has announced a new addition to the Azure cloud services for SQL Server – Azure SQL Database Managed Instance. So far, only a preliminary version of the product has been released (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/sql-database/sql-database-managed-instance), but we want to believe that it will fill the gap for customers who want to move to the cloud applications that work with Microsoft SQL Server. Managed instances complement other products and services, both Singleton standalone and Elastic Pool database pools.

Prior to the release of Azure SQL Managed Instance, Microsoft Azure SQL Database deployment options restricted access to any SQL Server instance level settings. There were no options for stand-alone and flexible database pools for the SQL Server agent, the service planning and execution of jobs for Microsoft SQL Server. Insufficient control over instance level parameters, such as minimum and maximum server memory and parallelism, did not allow database administrators to effectively manage performance.

Even more unpleasant is the lack of an SQL Server agent for both standalone and flexible database pools. This gap significantly limits the ability of companies to move instances of SQL Server in the “cloud”, because the agent is widely used for planning any task SQL Server, from everyday tasks to complex processes of loading data warehouses, as well as critical business logic, executed at the data level, but at a certain time or on schedule.

The inability to manage the behavior of SQL Server at the instance level and plan specific tasks within SQL Server through an SQL Server agent forces you to choose between saving a local solution and moving to the Azure cloud through a dedicated Azure virtual machine (IaaS variant). The cost structure of Azure IaaS is significantly different from that provided through the Azure SQL database, whether Singleton or Elastic Pool. Once the Azure SQL Database Managed Instance is announced, the choice looks different.

Platform as a service (PaaS)

The Azure SQL managed database instance is expected to be the preferred option for companies wishing to migrate local and even existing IaaS deployments to a fully managed PaaS instance. With PaaS in the Azure SQL Managed Instance, purchasing, maintaining and deploying hardware is no longer a concern for the company. Infrastructure maintenance management is fully delegated to the Azure platform. In addition, all updates and patches are hidden and do not take up the time of database administrators, freeing them for strategic tasks.

Ensure business process continuity with Azure SQL Database Managed Instance

With Azure Premium class storage, the availability time of a managed Azure SQL database instance reaches 99.99%. The redundancy inherent in the Azure SQL Database Managed Instance base structure also ensures high availability, which is an integral feature of this architecture. This is a significant advantage and savings over traditional local Availability Group (AG) Always On deployments, as there are no costs to purchase and process a fully clustered environment with at least one relevant server. This is also useful from a service and management point of view, as any failovers that provide redundancy in the managed instance are implemented within the Azure architecture.

Both building and administering high availability solutions requires highly skilled personnel. But the process of deploying or migrating to a managed instance is relieved of the complexity associated with building high availability structures.

Most of the day-to-day administrative tasks usually performed by database administrators are automatically managed by means implemented on the Azure platform: backups are automated and storage settings can be configured in Azure SQL Database Managed Instance, while users can initiate additional backups if necessary. Azure SQL Managed Instance has the ability to perform a recovery at a point in time, allowing you to immediately restore data that existed before each event that requires restoring the database.

Azure SQL security and compliance

Unlike the Azure SQL Database variants, Azure SQL Database Managed Instance is an isolated environment. You do not share the instance with other clients as in multi-site mode. You have dedicated computing resources, storage and AD authentication support, as opposed to single instances with fixed resources and flexible database pools. The transmitted data is encrypted and, like other Azure SQL databases, has built-in SQL threat detection and audit functions.

To date, two preliminary hardware versions have been implemented:

• generation 4 – Intel E5-2673 v3 (Haswell) 2.4 GHz processors, connected SSD, vCore = 1 PP (physical processor) providing 8, 16 and 24 vCore cores;
• generation 5 – 2.3 GHz Intel E5-2673 v4 (Broadwell) processors, fast eNVM SSD, vCore = 1 LP (Hyperthreading enabled logic processor) providing 8, 16, 24, 32, and 40 vCore cores

Product Specifications

• Memory values differ between CPU variants. Gen4 can connect up to 7GB per core, while Gen5 can connect up to 5.5GB per core.
• After a preliminary period, the goal is to achieve near 100 percent compliance with the latest version of SQL Server Enterprise Edition. The platform itself is the latest available version of Microsoft SQL Server.
• Azure Premium storage with a minimum capacity of 32 Gbytes and a maximum capacity of 8 Tbytes.
• Today the range of I/O operations per second is from 500 to 7500 per data file. Speed is determined by the limitations of Azure Premium class storage.

Heavy database limitations are a cause for concern

Now for Azure SQL Database Managed Instance there is a strict rule: 100 databases per managed instance. This is enough for most companies, but some of them, such as infrastructure providers as a service (IaaS) with hundreds or even thousands of databases per instance, will find that due to this limitation managed instances are likely to be unsuitable for supporting their structure in the simple process of moving to the “cloud”. If horizontal scaling is acceptable for company needs, then scaling from a single local SQL Server instance to multiple managed instances may still be a viable option. In the case of PaaS, significant cost savings are achieved. The cost savings in hardware management, labor, power, and service contracts, as well as the efficiency gains in various areas, may well outweigh the additional costs associated with multiple managed instances on a single server hosted in the company data center.

Next steps

For those who are interested in managed instances, Microsoft provides a variety of resources that help in the decision making process. In addition to contacting Microsoft directly, you can find resources by clicking on the links below:

• an overview of Azure SQL Database Managed Instance
• Azure SQL Database quotes
• new ways to upgrade your Azure SQL database applications.

How To Move / Migrate SQL Server Databases to Azure