Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs vCloud Air comparison

Microsoft and Virtustream are both solutions in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category. Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.5, while Virtustream is ranked #21. Microsoft holds a 10.5% mindshare in DS, compared to Virtustream’s 1.4% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Virtustream users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Read 134 Microsoft Azure SQL Database reviews

4,459 Views
4,370 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

vCloud Air

Read 3 vCloud Air reviews

722 Views
238 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

vCloud Air

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 12, 2024

Microsoft Azure SQL Database and vCloud Air are leading cloud database solutions, each with unique strengths. Users are happier with the support and pricing of Microsoft Azure SQL Database, while vCloud Air excels in feature set and perceived value.

Features: Microsoft Azure SQL Database is praised for its scalability, security, and integration with other Microsoft products. vCloud Air is valued for its flexibility and robust disaster recovery options. Azure offers more comprehensive integration, whereas vCloud Air shines in customization.

Room for Improvement: Users report a need for better documentation and easier troubleshooting in Microsoft Azure SQL Database. vCloud Air users suggest enhancements in interface responsiveness and greater third-party integration. Azure's main challenge is support documentation, while vCloud Air needs better responsiveness.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Azure SQL Database receives positive feedback for its smooth deployment and effective customer service. vCloud Air users appreciate the deployment flexibility but are less satisfied with customer support. Azure's deployment is straightforward, but vCloud Air allows more extensive customization.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Azure SQL Database is seen as cost-effective with a strong return on investment, especially for businesses already using Microsoft products. vCloud Air users find it relatively expensive but justify the cost with high satisfaction in return on investment due to its advanced features. Azure is cost-effective, while vCloud Air delivers high value at a higher price.

To learn more, read our detailed Database as a Service (DBaaS) Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

March 2026

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

134

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

vCloud Air

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

21st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (23rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is 10.5%, down from 15.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vCloud Air is 1.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Database as a Service (DBaaS) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure SQL Database	10.5%
vCloud Air	1.4%
Other	88.1%

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

Featured Reviews

Thomas Sawyer

Executive Director, Platform Architecture at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation – SMBC Group

Automatic tuning and multi-region availability have reduced manual workloads and improved performance management

The features of Microsoft Azure SQL Database that I like the most are easy scaling and high availability. I appreciate those features because it's easy to make Microsoft Azure SQL Database readily available in a multi-region infrastructure. Using Microsoft Azure SQL Database is very easy; it's much easier than SQL on-premise because I don't have to worry about deploying infrastructure, and I can rapidly deploy via infrastructure as code. I am using the automatic tuning feature in Microsoft Azure SQL Database. We are using the new feature of data encryption in Microsoft Azure SQL Database with customer-managed keys only. The reliability and stability of Microsoft Azure SQL Database platform are rock-solid; it's as good, if not better, than what our on-premise stability has been from an uptime perspective.

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Saurabh Chandratre

Director Solutions Architect - EMEA & APAC at Blue Medora

With the VPC, you can run your workloads in an active state, use it for development work and for hosting SQL/Exchange Servers in IaaS; RaaS/DaaS for DR activities.

All three components of the vCloud Air are equally valuable and important, i.e., IaaS, DaaS and RaaS. I like the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) offering compared to the Dedicated Cloud. It gives me the flexibility to utilize the pay-as-you-go option. You can run your workloads in an active state at reasonable prices. I have seen lots of companies use it for their development work, as well as for hosting SQL and Exchange Servers, i.e., in the active-passive mode instead of Replication (RaaS). Disaster Recovery is also a great feature that is affordable and easy to use. Disaster Recovery is a great component of the vCloud Air, where you can protect the on-premises cloud infrastructure, by providing self-service recovery options using the vSphere Replication. Some of the features that really stand out and I have used in my projects are: * Direct Connect: It provides high speed and private line connectivity. * Offline Data Transfer: For encrypted bulk data transport.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The features of Microsoft Azure SQL Database that I find most valuable are the ability to scale it up and down dynamically with customer load, which is necessary because during the day or business hours when there's more load, we need to scale it up and scale it back down at night for cost efficiency."

"Some of the best features of Microsoft Azure SQL Database are its scalability, pricing, and ease of setup."

"This solution provides more comfort to the end-user compared to a normal SQL server."

"The database has since become more stable, and I have less troubleshooting, which saves time and money."

"With these customers, we have managed to reduce a lot of infrastructure budgets and to provide an eco-friendly setup."

"The ability to maintain different environments, such as development and production databases, is valuable."

"The backup features are the most valuable."

"Its cost benefit is most valuable because you are charged per data unit instead of licensing. You can easily migrate your on-premise SQL to the cloud with a managed instance. That's what it is designed to do. It is easy to take your on-premise or older SQL instance and move it to the cloud. It makes it easy to get off your on-premise SQL and start utilizing the cost benefit of the cloud."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database pros

"The Cloud DRaaS solution provided the organization with new levels of flexibility and cost control, together with rapid expansion capability."

"This is the part that should be making admins and CIOs smile."

"VMware Workstation has an interesting feature to manage vSphere infrastructure (and also stand-alone ESXi hosts) that is really powerful and useful, for example to avoid to install the vSphere client (or the integration plugin) just to open one VM console or to change the power status for some VM."

Cons

"It is a little bit expensive for us. They can improve the price. It would also be very helpful if they can offer some free trial."

"Microsoft Azure SQL Database is one of those solutions that helps consolidate our infrastructure, though unfortunately it is not the only solution we use."

"What would make SQL Azure better is users having the capability of managing the database solution from the cloud, instead of having to do it from an actual machine because currently, database management via SQL Azure is done on a virtual machine or a PC. The solution should have the data functionality of managing SQL databases inside the cloud."

"Some data types are not available on SQL Azure while it's available on SQL Server."

"Pricing could be improved to make Microsoft Azure SQL Database more accessible."

"For simple queries, it usually goes smoothly, but more complex issues tend to lead to tough discussions and often require escalation to our Microsoft contact due to slower response times."

"SQL Azure's performance monitoring features need to be improved."

"In terms of improvement, making Microsoft Azure SQL Database faster would cater to big companies that require speed."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database cons

"I feel the user interface/portal can be improved further. I did experience timeout issues and the UI was performing slowly at times."

"It’s a really good idea, but the current implementation is very limited: you can simply see your VMs and just open the VM console."

"I don’t think it is quite where EC2 is with regard to capabilities and features but VMware is investing a lot in vCloud Air."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You can use it for smaller instances and pay less. You can also go for the premium product with all the security, scalability, and business continuity features, but you have to pay a premium amount."

"We pay less than $1000 monthly in licensing fees. There are no additional costs."

"The license is based on the number of users."

"I would like it to be cheaper, but comparatively, it is reasonably priced."

"It is expensive. Snowflake and PostgreSQL are cheaper than this. Google is also cheaper than Azure. Its licensing is on a pay-as-you-go basis. It is based on usage and storage."

"The price could be slightly cheaper."

"We have had some issues with the licensing of the solution."

"It requires a license. As compared to its competitors, such as Oracle, it is affordable and reasonable."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Marketing Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Outsourcing Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	60
Midsize Enterprise	17
Large Enterprise	61

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SQL Azure?

The automated scalability feature of SQL Azure has proven to be highly beneficial, particularly when deployed in the cloud.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SQL Azure?

I would say I am at a basic experience level with the pricing, setup costs and licensing because while I am the administrator for the service, I do not provision the services and worry about the co...

See all answers

What needs improvement with SQL Azure?

I have no comments at the moment on how Microsoft Azure SQL Database can be improved. I have no comments on additional features that I would like to see released in the next release. I do not have ...

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Comparisons

Google Cloud SQL vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 16% of the time

Amazon RDS vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 14% of the time

Azure Database for PostgreSQL vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 11% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 11% of the time

IBM Db2 on Cloud vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database Competitors

Microsoft Azure vs vCloud Air

Compared 27% of the time

Amazon AWS vs vCloud Air

Compared 12% of the time

Cleura vs vCloud Air

Compared 11% of the time

Interoute vs vCloud Air

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs vCloud Air

Compared 9% of the time

More vCloud Air Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

March 2026

Download Microsoft Azure SQL Database product report

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

March 2026

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Overview

Microsoft Azure SQL Database is a relational database-as-a-service that delivers predictable performance, scalability, business continuity, data protection, and near-zero administration to cloud developers and solution architects. This is the deep technical library for Azure SQL Database.

Microsoft

vCloud Air is a public cloud platform built on the trusted foundation of vSphere, compatible with your on-premises data center, that includes infrastructure, disaster recovery, and various applications as service offerings. vCloud Air allows you to extend your workloads into the cloud with ease. You can migrate existing onsite virtual machines (VMs) to the public cloud or start up new application VMs directly in the cloud.

Virtustream

Sample Customers

adnymics GmbH, LG CNS, Centrebet, netfabb GmbH, MedPlast, Accelera Solutions, Sochi Organizing Committee, realzeit GmbH

Lumeta, LifeSite, Clear Tec Solutions, National Physician Services, Queens University of Charlotte, California Natural Resources Agency, Pacific Disaster Center, Seventy Seven Energy Inc., Columbia Sportswear , CSS Corp

Buyer's Guide

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March 2026

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