Microsoft Azure SQL Database Reviews

We like the ease of integrating it with our on-premises environment. We use a hybrid model. We have a SQL Server on-premises, and we have an integration with the cloud version. We do CPU or disk intensive processes on-premises. For accessibility, we offload onto the cloud. When you do a lot of IO and things like that in the cloud, Microsoft charges for the CPU activity.

Price definitely may be a negative point. As for most of cloud based solution, certain cost components as CPU and IO usage may cause extremely hi costs.

It has been a bit over a year.

It is stable.

It is scalable. In fact, it is too easy to scale. It just scales and sends you the invoice. You have to tune it to lock it down, and then it doesn't go too far. These are the kind of things you have to take care of to avoid having bad surprises at the end of the month when they send you the resource usage invoice.

I didn't contact them regarding SQL Server, but I have contacted them for Azure and Office 365 support. They are usually quite good.

It is too easy. Initially, the database engine itself takes an hour, and that's it. Tuning it is another matter, but tuning is anyways a difficult task in itself.

It is quite expensive. I would definitely recommend not using the pay-as-you-go model because this will just mean all your money will go to Microsoft. So, really make sure to control resource usage as much as possible.

I would definitely recommend this solution. It is a very good product, and it is difficult to beat. I haven't got anything that I saw missing in it in terms of features. It is always integrated within Azure and Microsoft Office 365 ecosystems. If there is something that the database can't do, it is quite easy to have another path of the offering to take over. They are almost like AWS. They have so many services that it is really difficult not to be able to achieve things. There is always something or someone. It is just a matter of price. You also have access to the service, documentation, and even the user community.

I would rate SQL Azure an eight out of ten.

We use it for a few databases that are deployed for our own purposes. 

SQL is a simpler database. We use it more than other databases. 

I have been using SQL Azure for three to four months. 

We haven't had any issues with performance. 

There are only three users who use it. Once we are more comfortable we will give it to more users. My technology team uses it. 

Microsoft technical support is good. 

Pricing is reasonable for a big enterprise. The price is a little higher. It should have a 20% discount. 

I would rate SQL Azure an eight out of ten. 

I use SQL Azure strictly for active data rescue.

All of my work is stored in the Microsoft Azure Cloud.

I am working on a special product with another person — it's a secret product, so, unfortunately, I can't talk about it.

I am very happy with this solution; right now, I don't think there is anything I would change.

More power should be included between the upgrades. We started with a less costly service but we needed more power. We paid a lot and upgraded but we still needed more power. The power should increase more between each upgrade.

I have been using SQL Azure for three years.

SQL Azure is both very stable and scalable.

I have never had to contact customer support. There are several educational sites that I pay for that supply me with help.

The initial setup was very straightforward. It's online, so I didn't need to install anything. I just had to choose options and activate them. 

How much we pay is determined by how much we upgrade or downgrade our services. If you downgrade the service you pay less if you upgrade the services you pay more.

Microsoft has a cheap license for developers. Still, it was expensive for us because we are not a company, and we don't use crowdfunding, we used our own money to pay for the license.

I would recommend SQL Azure to others.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of ten.

Right now, with Azure, we have everything we need. The only problem we have with Azure is regarding the price.

We are using it for a database.

Their technical support is the most valuable.

There is so much information that it becomes confusing at times. The information can be more friendly. They could also provide additional training, especially at the beginning.

I have been using SQL Azure for the last two years.

It is pretty stable.

It is indeed scalable. We have around five people using it, and we plan to scale it.

Their technical support is good.

It is reasonable.

I would recommend SQL Azure. It is a good platform to use, and it has a lot of information, whatever you want. 

I would rate SQL Azure an eight out of ten.

As consultants, we deploy this solution to our customers both on cloud and on-prem. Most of our clients buy the solution as an application package which requires a database. If they are a "Microsoft shop," I recommend they use SQL Server. I'm the development manager and we are customers of Azure.

I like the reliability of SQL Server and the solution has become easier to use over time, and I believe it will become more popular in the future. It's also reasonably priced. As a competitor, Oracle may have 10% of the features that SQL Server cannot offer but those features are for high-end database and high-end applications. Most clients don't need those extras and shouldn't have to pay for high-end features like the redundancy.

SQL has become more versatile because of features they continue to add. Every new version has new features and it pretty much covers everything in terms of memory, database, the caching, the redundancy, and high availability. I would say MS SQL server fully meets the requirement of 95% of my clients out there.

If you use the solution in the Microsoft environment, it's fine. But if you're using Java then it seems to be out of place. AWS has a new product called Aurora, it's a new database that can deal with both types of workloads: transactional and analytical. That's a big challenge for all the other databases including SQL, because most of the databases out there are designed for either type of workload but the Amazon AWS Aurora does both. With SQL, if they do the BI normally, you then have to replicate the production database to another database which is no longer necessary with Aurora. It's something SQL could include. 

I've been using this solution for several years. 

This is a stable solution. 

I think they still have issues with scalability. For applications requiring scalability, I'd recommend using the database on the cloud and not on-premises. We have up to 200 users for this solution, mainly office workers and generally working in small to medium sized companies. 

Microsoft doesn't provide technical support, the support structure is not good. If you need something, you have to call them and the cost is $499 per incident ticket which is very expensive. The good thing about the SQL Server is that there is a lot of information out there in the community.

I also used Oracle and I think it's a good solution for companies that already use Oracle. It makes sense for them to go with that solution as the database for their application. For a company that has no attachment, I recommend SQL.

The initial setup was quite straightforward.

If our clients are non-Microsoft clients and they have the money, then I recommend Oracle. But for ease of use, scalability, and value for money, I like SQL.

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

It is a transactional system. We use it to visualize financial transactions, such as cash in, cash out, in real time.

It is very fast in replicating the data from one database to another. We do some extractions from multiple databases to a target database that we use for visualization. It has a good speed.

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.

I have been using this solution for around three years.

It is stable.

It is very scalable. Around 14 developers in our company use it. They are responsible for business intelligence and databases. 

I never contacted them.

I have used MySQL.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was not a big deal. It took a few minutes for features like .NET.

I installed it on my own. 

It is expensive for us. We are looking for something less expensive and thinking of migrating the whole system.

I would rate SQL Azure a seven out of ten. In terms of experience, it is a very good product, but it is a little bit expensive. 

The flexibility with regards to licensing is the most valuable aspect of the solution. 

Customers can benefit from a lot of cost savings if they go for Azure.

The implementation process needs to be improved.

Support isn't that great. They need to work on this aspect of their service. It can be challenging to reach them.

The solution needs to be more flexible overall.

It would help if there were better reporting features on offer.

I've been using the solution for a few years at this point.

The solution is quite stable. We don't have any problems with it in that sense. There aren't bugs. It doesn't glitch on us or freeze.

The solution can scale quite well. It's very easy to scale, for example, on AWS.

We typically work with big enterprise clients such as banks and utilities. The projects are quite sizeable.

We're only partly satisfied with technical support. They could work harder to improve themselves. They can be difficult to reach. They need to respond faster and be much more flexible.

The implementation process only takes a few hours with Azure, however, they do need to make the process a bit better. The upside is you don't have to scroll through everything manually as you do with an on-premises deployment. It's not overly complex.

The cost of the solution isn't too high. It's pretty reasonable.

We're a partner. We have a business relationship with the client.

I use a few different versions of the solution, depending on my clients, and have worked with both the 2016 and 2019 versions, for example.

I would recommend the product.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I'd rate it at an eight.

We are using SQL Server both on Azure and in a Spark environment, on-premises.

The most valuable feature is PolyBase.

The product is very user-friendly.

I feel that the price is high and it could be reduced.

I have more than 14 years of experience in the Microsoft Data Warehouse platform.

SQL Azure is very stable.

This is a very scalable product.

I am the only person in my company who uses it.

I have not been in contact with technical support.

The initial setup is straightforward and I don't find it complex.

Overall, I am happy with this product and I recommend it.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We like the collaborative nature of the solution. It's the most valuable aspect of the solution.

The stability of the solution is very good.

The availability of resources could be improved.

The solution needs to offer online training to help improve the capacity of teams to manage the SQL.

The pricing is very high.

I've been using the solution for two years so far.

We haven't had any issues with the stability of the solution. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable for us.

We haven't had any issues with the solution, therefore, we haven't required any technical support. I can't speak to the quality of technical support as I've never dealt with them.

In the beginning, we decided to use a specialist to configure all the systems for us and the solution is almost perfect.

The price is very high, especially when you compare it to other solutions. There aren't extra costs, however. All fees are included in the licensing package.

We're simply customers. We don't have any professional relationship with Azure.

I would recommend the solution. It's great.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. I'd give it perfect marks if the pricing was more reasonable and if they offered better learning tools to guide our staff.

I work for a consulting firm which uses the technology marketing projects from Microsoft and other IT vendors, re-routing the product, and creating a technical and architectural guide;  basically I work on the consulting assignments. I am a lead consultant in one of the leading IT companies in India and I've been implementing bridges and consulting in an architectural support role. I've been using Azure as a stack and that's where my proficiency is. We're partners with Azure. 

This has become a very global solution. The big advantage is the UI which has been simplified. The coding doesn't require much effort so it's valuable in that sense. They have invested a lot in security and compliance so it's also a good product in that area.

The product has many features that might not be explored by many end users because there isn't much technical guidance available. If I'm interested in understanding a particular feature I'd like there to be some kind of explore button that would provide technical in-depth assistance, and that's lacking for now. There is very little technical documentation. 

As already mentioned, additional features should include technical documentation on the product features. Secondly, there could also be some improvement in performance. I know they have done benchmark testing but sometimes performance is lacking. They can improve in that area too. 

I've been using this solution for four years. 

This is a good and stable product. 

I don't think scalability is an issue, it's just a matter of adding more RAM as the users increase. 

Technical support is good but adding technical documentation would really make a difference. 

The initial setup is straightforward and the deployment is very easy because it's a UI based migration. There's no hard coding. I believe deployment takes maybe two or three hours to get the environment set up and to be able to start exploring. We had one person  responsible for deployment and we have three or four people dealing with maintenance in a company of close to 200 people. 

The solution is a little expensive but not too bad in comparison to other products on the market and since I am using the cloud version it's really not too much. There are no additional costs. 

If you're looking for many features in one product with easy usability and UI, then this product is good. You can readily add on features and exploration and all those things. They are adding features all the time so they are creating one large solution, which is like a repository for things like big data and sensors. The SQL Server encapsulates all the requirements.

I would rate this solution a seven out of 10.