Microsoft Azure SQL Database Reviews

We are deploying a few server-based applications, and we are using the Azure SQL database.

It provides good analytics. We can see which database is getting more requests, etc. We are able to see everything in Azure SQL. Its analytics are in a readable format, so a layman can understand them.

Its performance is good. It has a lot of features. It has the backup feature, which is not there in Amazon RDS. In Azure SQL, there is an option to replicate and restore a database point to point, whereas we can't do that with Amazon RDS.

It is also simpler and more powerful than Amazon RDS. It also has analytics, and it automatically suggests a few things. It has an in-built indexing function.

In terms of support, they don't give much support.

I have been using this solution for four to five years.

There are more than 12,000 people using this service. Its usage is going to increase day by day.

They don't give much support, but their tech support subscription cost is much lesser than AWS.

Its installation is very easy. We can easily move from one pool to another pool in Azure. It takes just one to two minutes.

We take care of it ourselves.

It only has a subscription-based license.

I would recommend this solution to others. I would rate it a ten out of ten.

• Azure SQL database
• Office 365 mail server

We are a solutions provider and we have implemented this solution for many organizations. With these customers, we have managed to reduce a lot of infrastructure budgets and to provide an eco-friendly setup. Organizations can reduce, by a lot, electricity consumption and simplify their cooling plant setup.

It needs to improve the security features, because people still aren't confident enough to use a public cloud.

I've used it for one year alongside Office 365 and Windows VM.

There wasn't much except some issues faced when migrating into the cloud.

Not much.

No issues encountered.

It's very good.

They have very good support and lots of online training as well as having seminars and customer support available. I have joined many sessions through the Microsoft Virtual Academy.

We didn't use a previous solution.

It's not complex and, in actual fact, it's easy. Ready made set-ups are available any time.

The pricing is good, but there is still a gap if you are going to manage a large setup and a big growth of an organization. If that's the case, then pricing will be big challenge especially the pricing forecast and your analysis of growth and IT budget.

I have done some studies of SalesForce AWS among others .

It's a nice, very advanced technology based project that is very secure and cost effective cut edge technology. There are lots of cost and technical resources that can be cut while implementing this solution, to manage cost budget IT infrastructure for any organization.

The primary use case is to pass services for applications of some customers, where they have maybe the front end in dot net and another language, and SQL service in Azure.

The administration console in Azure, all in one is the most valuable feature. Monitoring the transactions in Azure and the elasticity when we need to grow the databases for our customers.

I think that the cost management in SQL is not clear because we may use some tax to identify products, but in some cases identifying the transactions in SQL is not easy for some financial cost centers. Perhaps if in Azure cost management we have the opportunity to monitor the SQL cost in more detail, it will be helpful.

I have been using the solution for around four years.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

In some cases, our customers need to move forward with their SQL projects and when they try to budget in the Azure pricing calculator some costs appear that in the production environment are very different. This becomes problematic for customers when they use SQL Pass services.

We are an IT company, so I'm an architect for that company using Azure solutions. Many users in many companies use SQL. I estimate maybe around 1,000 final users and technical staff from each company are using SQL Azure.

We have a lot of stuff that is still on-prem, and we're only sticking our toe in the water with SQL Azure. For what we're doing, it is a simple database. We haven't yet put any of our harder stuff on Azure.

SQL Azure is in the cloud. So, it has to be the latest version. It is version agnostic.

The main advantage of it is that there is no infrastructure cost. We don't have to host it here. So, there is no infrastructure cost. 

The second advantage is elasticity. We can grow it or shrink it depending on the demand. We have no restraint on capacity.

There is probably more functionality in our on-prem SQL Server than SQL Azure. 

I have been using this solution for about two years.

It is stable, and there are no issues.

Its scalability is very good.

It was straightforward.

We have a third party for its deployment and maintenance.

We have the licensing fee, and we are also paying a third party to maintain it with an SLA.

There is no infrastructure cost, but its running costs are higher than expected. There is the cost of the Azure cloud, which is pricier than expected, but it is not specific to SQL Azure. It is specific to the cloud. You expect it to be cheaper, but it is more expensive to run it.

I would advise going for it and exploring it. We've only dipped our toes in the water. We haven't put any of our main things. We're just toying with a few new applications, and we haven't brought everything across, but I would recommend it.

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

The solution is used for a lender's business application. 

The scalability and simple management of the infrastructure are the most valuable features. 

They have some problems with the introduced features in the latest version of the server. The multiple query planning parameters have problems. The problem is the automated configuration. Even when they address the problems, there are still issues.

The second issue is to audit the real users on behalf of whom we operate secret servers. Normally in our application, we use only a single connection to leverage the pooling.

I have been working with SQL Azure for eight years. 

The solution is highly stable. I rate the stability a ten out of ten. 

The solution is hugely scalable yet it does not support auto-scaling and it is very time-consuming. The PR database takes a lot of time hence one should keep another server synchronized with the dataset. Presently, ninety thousand users are using the solution. I rate the scalability a six out of ten. 

The technical support is very good. 

The initial setup is very straightforward. 

I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten. 

I would rate the overall solution a nine out of ten. 

We are using it for an application in two different models, the PaaS model and the SaaS model. One is the product, so we are using it as a SaaS model. We are using the other one simply as a PaaS model.

For its deployment, we are sort of using the highest model in which one instance has only VM and the SQL installer on it. Another instance is simply using SQL Azure.

We primarily and generally use it only for DB purposes. When it comes to the Azure part, we can easily provision, scale up, and scale down the generator machine. This kind of flexibility is the USP of SQL Azure.

Its interface and ease of use are also valuable. It is very easy to use and integrate with multiple databases. If I need to pull in or import some data from my on-premises database, the ease with which you can connect and pull the data, not only from SQL Server but also from other flavors of MySQL or even Oracle, is very good. 

The way it has been designed, in the on-premises deployments, the underlying Windows OS is highly scalable but has a very large resource requirement. A lot of power-related and memory-related things are there, which I have not seen in the RHEL and Oracle. I have not tried SQL on RHEL EXEC. On Windows, infrastructure-wise, a very large workload is running on the SQL. This issue is related to Windows, not SQL.

I have been using SQL Azure for two years. 

As of now, we have less production workload on Azure, but whatever is there, it is pretty stable. So, from a very large workload perspective, I can't comment, but till now, I have not found any issue. I will consider it quite stable as of now.

It is highly scalable.

My team initiates the service request. We have unified support from Microsoft. The service request is through the service hub. This is, in fact, a very good change from the point of view of the overall approach towards support. We can open multiple or unlimited numbers of service requests on the service hub, and their response is also quite good.

We started with just a simple client-server kind of application. Right now, we are basically in the full-phased data lake solution of Azure. So, it is in the design and architecture stages. When it is finalized, then we will implement a full-blown solution on Azure.

I would, of course, highly recommend this solution. You cannot avoid SQL Server or SQL Azure if you are primarily working in the database domain. There are a lot of other databases available in the market, but the ease with which you can do the development and the overall support that you get cannot be compared with any other database. 

I would rate SQL Azure a nine out of ten.

We usually work on a valuation basis. When a customer wants to get on to our cloud, we suggest SQL Azure to them.

The preset configuration switches we can select on SQL Azure should be made more liberal to work on. The licensing cost for the solution is very expensive and should be improved.

I have been using SQL Azure for eight years.

SQL Azure is a stable solution.

SQL Azure is a scalable solution. Around 30 to 40 customers are using the solution.

Their customer support is not ok at all because sometimes the tickets we raise don't get authorized.

The initial setup for the solution is easy. It takes around 10 to 15 minutes to set up the solution. The deployment of the solution is straightforward.

The ROI depends on the customer and the scenario.

SQL Azure's licensing cost is expensive.

SQL Azure is a cloud-based solution. We usually require one or two people to deploy and maintain the solution. I would recommend SQL Azure for other people who don’t want to manage their environment. The worst thing about Microsoft is that it has a very bad license agreement that nobody understands.

Overall, I rate SQL Azure an eight out of ten.

I think this product can improve its integrations with business intelligence software. The integrations are always cumbersome due to the approvals, passwords, et cetera. 

I have been using this solution for the last three years.

My impression is that this solution is quite stable. I would rate its stability an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

I would rate the scalability of this solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best. Currently, there are two users of this solution in our company.

I will be doing the implementation myself with the help of a third party.

We evaluated the SQL Server in addition to this solution, but we ultimately chose Azure mainly to have everything on one platform.

Overall, I would rate this solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.