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Microsoft Azure SQL Database pros and cons

Vendor: Microsoft

4.3 out of 5

93 reviews
96% willing to recommend

571 followers

Pros & Cons summary

Microsoft Azure SQL Database offers easy scalability and high availability within Microsoft's cloud infrastructure, ensuring performance and security. It excels in data management with seamless integration with Microsoft technologies. Cost savings arise from a pay-as-you-go model. However, issues with initial setup, limited third-party integration, pricing complexity, scalability challenges, and the need for enhanced security features present concerns. Users benefit from excellent migration support despite these limitations.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Microsoft Azure SQL Database offers straightforward and quick setup, typically completing deployments in less than one day.

It provides high availability and robust business continuity, ensuring service stability and reliable performance.

Microsoft Azure SQL Database allows for significant cost savings, offering a pay-as-you-go model that scales with usage.

Users find the database features easy to integrate with other systems, including on-premises databases and various other databases such as MySQL and Oracle.

It is highly scalable and secure, benefiting from Microsoft's continuous investments in cloud technology.

CONS

Microsoft Azure SQL Database is criticized for its high pricing, with several users indicating the need for a more competitive pricing model.

There is a consensus that better integration with open source technologies and third-party applications is necessary, as current capabilities are considered limited.

The initial setup and configuration process can be complex, requiring more straightforward and comprehensive documentation to aid users.

Users express concerns over limited scalability options, particularly for handling larger workloads and seamless migrations from on-premise systems.

Support and customer service are frequently noted as areas needing improvement, with users finding it challenging to receive effective assistance and response in a timely manner.

Microsoft Azure SQL Database Pros review quotes

Solution architect at Rackspace

Mar 21, 2024

The product's initial setup phase is very easy.

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reviewer1615530

Project Manager at a educational organization with 11-50 employees

Jul 1, 2021

We have come from hosting on-premise for customers, or they've done it themselves with SQL. We've now taken a cloud offering for the equivalent services of standard database management and the inbuilt backup and restore offerings. The scalability is probably the biggest feature that we are benefiting from by being in the cloud.

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Samuel Lambrecht

Principal Industry Consultant at Intelligent Operations Solutions

Aug 5, 2022

The most valuable aspect of SQL Azure is the SQL language itself. It's open and everybody can use it at my company. Also, we thought in the beginning that the response time would be inadequate, but it's actually decent. It's much better than expected. Then again, I'm not a programmer, but that's what I hear from our development team.

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Microsoft Azure SQL Database

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Learn what your peers think about Microsoft Azure SQL Database. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.

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Raed Gharzeddine

Technical advisor and software architect at Technical advisor and software architect

Dec 8, 2022

I prefer using Microsoft SQL Server because I like the experience and the way Microsoft handles the query tuning and security.

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SZ

Slawomir Zablocki

Data Platform Architect at APN Promise

Jul 16, 2019

What is really helpful about the Azure SQL is that when we have a problem with our sound queries, we can trade information about what indexes we should create on tables. It's really helpful for me and also for developers.

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Senior Database Administrator at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

Feb 23, 2021

Cost savings are the most valuable. The DR/high availability is also valuable. The failover group with the built-in DR/high availability features is probably one of the easiest things.

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GB

Gerald Balangile

IT Support Engineer - AZURE Administrator at Mindspring Computing

Feb 22, 2023

The reason we moved to the cloud was for the convenience of not having any physical hardware to maintain.

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reviewer1589394

Cloud Solution Engineer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

May 28, 2021

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.

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AM

Global Data Architecture and Data Science Director at FH

May 31, 2022

What I like about SQL Azure is that it's similar to your on-premises SQL databases. It's not much different, so it's easy to start quickly on the solution if you know Microsoft SQL. I find its ease of use most valuable, and I also like that SQL Azure is also easily integrated with the Azure Cloud platform.

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reviewer1294518

Solution Principal at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Sep 27, 2020

The solution is a fairly mature product. It provides good stability.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 86)

Microsoft Azure SQL Database Cons review quotes

Solution architect at Rackspace

Mar 21, 2024

There are certain shortcomings when it comes to the stability of the product, especially if I consider the fact that there can always be some bug-related issues in the tool.

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reviewer1615530

Project Manager at a educational organization with 11-50 employees

Jul 1, 2021

We haven't had any major issues that have prevented us from doing stuff fundamentally. For its implementation, sometimes, it is complicated to understand what your needs are. It would be good to have a few use cases that provide different cloud variations that match on-premise installations and show how they can be moved to the cloud a bit better.

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Samuel Lambrecht

Principal Industry Consultant at Intelligent Operations Solutions

Aug 5, 2022

They should also simplify the security in Azure. We are using the cloud as a platform, so there is no physical infrastructure. We're using Azure components like databases and servers to create an application. Integrating those components in terms of permissions and security is challenging for us. Maybe there is a lack of knowledge on our side, but it's not straightforward.

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Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Free Report: Microsoft Azure SQL Database Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Microsoft Azure SQL Database. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.

816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Raed Gharzeddine

Technical advisor and software architect at Technical advisor and software architect

Dec 8, 2022

One of the nice features in Microsoft SQL Server is the SQL Server CLR, which we sometimes need to use to protect our procedures using C# or CLR. This is not available in the SQL Azure database.

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SZ

Slawomir Zablocki

Data Platform Architect at APN Promise

Jul 16, 2019

I need something which is in one place so I can automate the Azure data factory, but it's a different tool. It's not easy and in one place, so I can't switch to the other tool and do something there, automate everything there in the on-prem infrastructure, and then have everything in the agent. I can just pick one packet and use it. However, I want to be able to click it and run it.

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Senior Database Administrator at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

Feb 23, 2021

Its automation can be improved. SQL Server Agent was a very big part of the on-prem tools. While moving from on-prem to the cloud, redoing some of such tools was very cumbersome in Azure. There was a whole new set of technologies and methodologies. It should have easier automation-type features to be able to implement such tools. It should have almost a SQL agent type of substance built into that.

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GB

Gerald Balangile

IT Support Engineer - AZURE Administrator at Mindspring Computing

Feb 22, 2023

Microsoft could improve its documentation and support.

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reviewer1589394

Cloud Solution Engineer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

May 28, 2021

I'm not really a SQL DBA, so I can't go into the depths of the areas that need to be improved. They can maybe make it a bit easier to educate people on how to develop SQL Server in Azure. They can provide some free seminars and webinars and more training in general for easier migration. I know there is some stuff on Microsoft learning, but it would be helpful and useful to have more up-to-date content.

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AM

Global Data Architecture and Data Science Director at FH

May 31, 2022

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.

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reviewer1294518

Solution Principal at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Sep 27, 2020

From a security perspective, although their features are decent, they can always be improved upon, updated, and refined to help protect clients better.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 87)

Product Categories

Product Categories

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Amazon RDS vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Google Cloud SQL vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

MongoDB Atlas vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Oracle Database as a Service vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Google Cloud Spanner vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

vCloud Air vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Yugabyte Platform vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

IBM Db2 on Cloud vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

See all alternatives

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