Microsoft Azure SQL Database Reviews

The most valuable feature of SQL Azure is the user-friendly VMs.

The solution’s visibility could be improved.

The solution's stability is good, and we haven't faced any issues so far.

I rate SQL Azure a nine out of ten for stability.

SQL Azure is a scalable solution. Around ten users are regularly using SQL Azure in our organization.

The solution’s initial setup is straightforward.

The solution’s deployment takes hardly a day.

Overall, I rate SQL Azure ten out of ten.

Our primary use case for the solution is for applications. We get many applications in the environment, and most applications use Microsoft SQL, Azure SQL, and DBs, and a few use Postgres SQL. So primarily, the focus is to connect with the DB team and have a specific expert in the SQL environment.

We find the uptime and multi-region features available. Additionally, the dashboard is valuable.

The solution can be improved by reducing the constraints available on cloud and improving support response times.

We have beee using the solution for approximately two years.

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable. I rate is as nine out of ten.

We have had a good experience with customer service and support. They are knowledgeable but sometimes take a while to give solutions. I rate customer service and support as seven out of ten.

Neutral

The initial setup is straightforward. I rate is as eight out of ten.

I rate the solution as eight out of ten. The solution is good but can be improved by reducing the constraints on cloud and improving support response times.

I'm an end-user. I'm a business analyst, so I'm using SQL Azure to do analysis.

Emergency mode is quite useful.

I haven't explored SQL Azure's features much, but I would like to see some better integration with Python. 

I've been using SQL Azure for approximately two years.

SQL Azure is stable.

I think SQL Azure is scalable. Almost 200 people are using it in the commercial department.

I can't say much about Microsoft support because the IT people are the ones who deal with the Microsoft support team. Whenever we have an issue, we put our IT team on it and leave everything to them. They try to handle it if they can or they might bring in some consultants from the Microsoft team. 

I previously used Oracle, but I didn't spend much time with it, so I really can't say. I don't think Oracle has any capabilities that SQL Azure lacks, and it's not used in as many companies and institutions.

Setting up SQL Azure isn't complex.

I rate SQL Azure seven out of 10. 

We offer this solution as part of a bundle to our customers for which we offer technical services. We are aiming to have a centralized marketplace.

We have experience with hybrid, on-premises, and public cloud deployments. We have a complex environment and are slowly transitioning to this solution. Our production environment is the only one that we're putting into Microsoft Azure. For security reasons, we still have some systems on-premises.

The DR for this solution is Active/Active.

This solution offers high availability, and business continuity is in place.

This solution would be improved with the inclusion of better self-service tools.

It needs to be easier for my technical teams to perform support tasks.

This solution is scalable. Multiple tiers and multiple layers are there. 

We are still very early in the process and have not yet had many use cases. However, at this stage, Microsoft is working proactively with us. We have premium-level support.

The initial setup of this solution is usually complex, especially for an enterprise customer. This solution is tailored to specific customers, which is why complexity varies.

The typical deployment takes six months.

Our Total Cost of Operations is cheaper using this solution as compared to an on-premises deployment.

The licensing for this solution is based on subscription. We have an enterprise license, so the price of this solution is high.

I recommend this solution, as long as the cloud environment is suitable.

This is a good solution, but from the angle of security, everything can be breached.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use it for benefits management in the healthcare domain. 

It helps us deploy new applications very quickly. We have set up everything on Azure, including SQL Azure. 

It has a lot of out-of-the-box features, which is useful. It is easy to move applications for disaster recovery or availability, and all these features are out of the box.

It is easily scalable, and it is faster than SQL Server. It is also less expensive than using SQL Server. It has the pay-as-you-go model, and the charges are based on the usage.

There are some limitations for cross-database queries and features. The migration of data from older systems should be easier.

For deployment, there are too many options, which sometimes makes it difficult to figure out the best option. There is not enough information to help you to find the best option for deployment. There should be more documentation about this.

I have been using this solution for a couple of years.

It is easily scalable. We have around 60 to 70 users. We'll be increasing its usage. We are gradually moving to SQL Azure for all our requirements.

Their technical support is prompt, but some of our issues have not been addressed, even though the team is trying. We didn't have a good experience with them for a couple of issues, but overall, they have been good.

We got everything ready-made in Azure because our all applications are in the .NET framework and SQL, so we found SQL Azure to be the most suitable option.

It is straightforward, but if you're migrating data from SQL Server, it is quite time-consuming and not so easy.

I am not aware of the exact pricing, but our monthly bill for Azure is around 80,000. It is less expensive than using SQL Server. It has the pay-as-you-go model, and the charges are based on the usage.

If you are migrating from older systems, you should know that CLR is not supported in SQL Azure. Data migration can also be a challenge.

I would rate SQL Azure a nine out of ten.

What I like the most is the processes and the easiness of deployments.

What I don't like is the personalization of an instance is difficult to deploy. Sometimes it's hard if you want to make a cluster of SQLs on Azure; it's not a good approach, but sometimes it worked out for me.

If I have to do something very specific to the instance, sometimes I am not allowed to leave those types of configurations because they need it to be broader. They are not at the level that I need to make the configurations that I want.

The configuration is the only area to be improved. Everything else is what it is and what we expected. The configuration is the area that is most cumbersome.

I have been using SQL Azure for two years.

I have the latest version. I always update to the latest version.

It's a very stable solution.

SQL Azure is perfectly scalable.

We have a team of 20 to 25 developers who are using this solution for development. 

Also, we have thousands of clients for the databases that are using it.

Technical support is fast, it's reliable, and they are knowledgeable.

If your problem is in the knowledge base then support is very good. If it's not in the knowledge base, then it's central and not on the Microsoft roadmap.

The initial setup is more complex than it is straightforward.

The easiest deployment requires an hour. If you have a one-by-one project that consists of migration and replication, it can take several weeks.

Using SQL Azure really depends on the settings that you want to deploy, or the amount of money that you want to spend. If you are deploying and thinking that something will grow so that you can align your income to pay per use, then it's pretty good. 

If you are considering something where your payments or your income is not related to pay-per-use, you may consider using it on-premises during the beginning. It really depends on your settings.

Overall, this solution is pretty good.

There are still some areas that have to develop, but I would rate SQL Azure an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for its Data Lake and Data Warehouse, in both cases for our customers.

The solution is easily integrated into other SQL solutions. It's flexible in that sense.

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

The initial setup isn't too difficult.

There is very good documentation. It's unbelievable, the amount of documentation on offer through Microsoft's site.

The security features are quite good.

In terms of management, you can't really pause things. It doesn't allow for that kind of capability.

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

I would love it if that had dynamic data masking and features of that nature.

I've been using the solution for two years at least at this point.

The stability of the solution is pretty good. It's a mature product, so you don't get bugs or glitches, and they update it regularly. It doesn't crash. It's reliable.

The solution can scale well. That's not a problem at all. If a company needs to scale, they can do so easily.

Microsoft's technical support is great. We're satisfied with their service. They have a pretty extensive online database and an online community that is quite helpful. It's all very helpful.

If you need to reach them in person, you need to have a licensing agreement in place. If you purchase that, you can get more personalized assistance.

We previously used SQL on-premises servers. It's very easy to migrate over to the cloud if you have that setup. It's basically one-to-one.

The initial setup isn't complex. It's pretty straightforward. However, it does take a long time to provision and manage everything. It can take a couple of hours typically to deploy the solution.

You do have to pay for technical support. If you have it in your licensing agreement, you will gain access to a team you can call if you run into issues.

I'm not sure of the exact licensing costs. From a cloud perspective, a client would be charged based on consumption, so the pricing would depend on elements such as how many users or how many queries (and how complex), et cetera. 

I do know that it's competitive pricing, however. Most solutions of this caliber are around the same price. They compete with each other.

We're Microsoft partners.

The solution is constantly being updated. We're on whatever the latest version/update is at any given time.

We're a consultancy, so we work with a variety of clients and adjust solutions based on their needs.

I'd advise new users to take advantage of the documentation on offer from Microsoft. It will really help them understand the solution.

Overall, I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

It is basically hosting the backend of our application that we write as a software development company. We're moving our educational timetabling software, which was historically an on-premise installation, to a cloud-based service offering for customers.

It is pretty much version-less in the sense that we are using whatever is presented to us and available. We are purely using the cloud-based services from Azure hosted in the cloud, which obviously and technically is version-less to some degree. We are using SQL Azure, app services, Application Gateway, key vaults, and storage solutions within Azure. It is relatively simple but sufficient for our needs at the moment.

We predominantly don't use the GUI interface. We are using Terraform as our infrastructure and code provider to manage and maintain all of the Azure components that we are using. They're offering all the integration and providing it through the APIs.

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.

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.

Its pricing is complicated and can be improved. We need a better offering. Making it cheaper is always a good thing for us.

I have been using this solution for two years.

We haven't had any issues. It has been up and available and working when we needed it to. We haven't had any outages that we're aware of.

There are not many users at the moment because we're still in pre-production. We're sort of in beta testing at the moment.

It probably has 50 users currently. It is not a very large tool. We are planning to expand its usage as we build out our actual software ourselves, which we're still working on. We'll be making that available to customers, and we'll be offering that as a global opportunity for customers.

I have not been in touch with their technical support.

We were just using Microsoft on-premise SQL, and we've migrated to Azure in the cloud. It basically is like for like, as far as we're concerned.

It depends on which area you're coming from. If you're using the GUI, it's relatively simple. Understanding what your needs are sometimes is a bit more complicated. Understanding the availability of things like Elastic pools took us a little bit of time to get our heads around but, otherwise, it is pretty simple. They could provide some use cases for this.

It is hard to provide the deployment duration because it wasn't just Azure on its own that we were having to deal with. We were taking our on-premise product and converting it. Preparing the infrastructure and doing it via the likes of Terraform took us probably about three months overall, but that was more about getting up to speed on the tools to do it, as opposed to individual components such as SQL.

The pricing is actually complicated, and that is probably one downside of it. In some respects, although we can plan for the costs on a month-by-month basis, we are finding it hard to project our costings for it. 

Fundamentally, Microsoft is offering two pricing models, and it is challenging to understand the differences between the two. We're basically on the DTU model at the moment. That may change in the future as the size grows, but it is one of those things that we'll end up monitoring as we progress. 

At the moment, to get a reasonable response, generally, the price is a little high for us, but it is one of those things for which we know that we can do improvements on our code. So, it is not just the service that's the problem; it is some of the things that we need to do as well.

I would recommend it depending upon the use case. If you need an on-premise service, then you would choose the on-premise SQL, and if you need a cloud-based one, then I'd suggest SQL on the cloud. The scalability of SQL in the cloud is far simpler than the scalability of SQL on-premise. This is one benefit that the cloud edition has over the on-premise version that people could consider.

I would rate SQL Azure an eight out of 10.