Microsoft Azure SQL Database Reviews

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 use the public cloud model of this solution. 

With Azure, we can achieve very high workloads (~6K queries/min) and, if necessary, scale databases in real-time with only one minute of downtime for our customers. It enables us to scale up on demand and to scale down when needed. 

The most valuable feature of Azure Database is the read-scaleout one: in Premium and Business tiers, the logic single DB consists of 4 identical DBs, the main one (writable) and three read-only synchronized copies; in our application we can use the three read-only copies for almost all of the read-only query and this allows workload distribution and minimizes the concurrency in write operations.

They have good documentation. It's concentrated information. 

Migrating existing application to SQL database had many problems, developing a new app for Azure Database not. 

Their support is nice but frequently their responses aren't effective. 

The documentation is always updated with the latest features but the documentation for the database features should be better. It doesn't specify when specific features will be released. The documentation needs improvement. They should improve the way they explain the information to the market.

It should have better support for UTF 8 (a feature already present on the on-premises version of SQL Database 2019) a for Hadoop integration.

It is stable. 

It is very scalable. 

The initial setup was incredibly easy. Moving from a standard tier to a business tier is not so easy and the documentation isn't so clear the presence of the read scale out copies.

I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

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 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.

We use the solution as a customer database for travel desk applications.

The solution suits well for our server requirements. It doesn't require an extensive system to run. So, it is a fast, limited, and affordable database serving our business purpose.

They should include more accessible functions for image tooling. Presently, we are using optional features for it.

I have been using the solution for about two years.

The solution is moderately stable. I rate its stability an eight out of ten.

It is a scalable solution. We have around 200 solution users in our organization. I rate its scalability an eight out of ten.

The solution's technical support team is good.

Positive

Previously, I used Microsoft's on-premises version.

The solution's initial setup was straightforward. I rate the process an eight out of ten. It took one or two days to deploy it. Since it is cloud-based, we followed the standard Azure mechanism.

The solution is moderately expensive. I rate the pricing a six out of ten.

One should be clear about their reporting environment. For instance, Microsoft ecosystem reporting supports only Power BI. Secondly, one should ensure they utilize more customization options than already issued.

I rate the solution as eight. It is a familiar product for users who already work on Microsoft environments. If you need a limited cut-down version, it also has an option for a single database.

We decided to implement some forms for different purposes. We needed to implement it on-premises, so we did this on Azure to support the data from the forms implemented on a SQL server, and on Azure on several databases. It's very easy. 

The solution is quite straightforward to set up.

It can scale. 

The solution is stable and reliable. 

I want the pricing to be improved. They should try to lower it for their customers. 

I've used the solution for one year.

The stability is good. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution can scale. I can't say how much as I don't have a comparable use case on the cloud and on-premises. 

We have about five people using the solution right now. For now, we do not have plans to increase usage.

The support is good. They have a good document library. If there is a problem, we can figure it out. 

The initial setup is very straightforward. It's not complex at all. For us, it did not take more than one or two hours. It was quick to deploy. 

We only need one person on hand for deployment and maintenance. They are a developer. 

We did not use a consultant for the implementation process. We have a lot of experience in Azure and a lot of systems in Azure as well. 

We have a yearly licensing fee we need to pay. It's not a cheap solution. 

I'd recommend the solution to other users. 

Based on the experience I've had, I would rate it seven out of ten. 

We use SQL Azure for what we call an inspection round. Inspection rounds are mainly used by an inspector in the field to check the compliance of the equipment, like if a given machine doesn't have enough instrumentation. 

In any kind of plant, there is an inventory of assets. Most companies have an inspector who goes to the field to check the condition and record some indicators. The results of the inspection are recorded in our software. All the data from the inspection round is stored in our database in Azure. That is what we use the Azure database for.

We created a custom PaaS. It's not a pre-built device in the cloud. Azure components like SQL Azure and a web server are combined to create this solution. Our SQL performs better in that space than a readymade device.

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. 

There are some characteristics called "joins," like "inner join," "full join," "left join," "right join," etc. It's a little confusing for some coders. I think that could be simplified. 

I'm in the analytic space, so I would introduce a higher level of coding using artificial intelligence. SQL is quite close to English. They could add a voice interface where you speak into it, and the machine writes the code for you. My weakness in coding requires something automated, so I can be more proactive. 

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. 

The data modeling is not good for me. There are better tools than SQL Azure when you need to create the abstract part of the database design. It's weak. It's not user-friendly, and the notation is specific to Microsoft. I believe we use a third-party tool for data modeling because it's easier to use. Communicating with that tool is easier than SQL Azure. The model is nicer.

I have been using SQL Azure for about five or six years. We started using the solution for one of our clients, a mining company, more than five years ago. They were the first customers to use our solution.

We don't have any issues with stability. The primary issues in the cloud are privileges, security, and integration between applications. That is a total mess for us. When we need to get the application servers access to the Azure database. 

SQL Azure is scalable.

I only contacted Azure support once, and it was decent. We asked some questions, and they replied. I cannot it say was great or awful. They met our expectations. 

Setting up SQL Azure is easy. Even I can do it. 

We pay around $1,200 per year for one customer based on what they currently use. It's mainly processing and storage. SQL Azure is a bit more expensive than other solutions. There are free databases, but they don't have the scalability of the Azure cloud. It might not be affordable for some companies, but it's highly scalable.

I rate SQL Azure eight out of 10. I would recommend it to others depending on their needs. It might be beyond the budget of some companies.

Generally, what I like about Azure as a cloud is the analytics you can apply on top of that data. Azure provides a number of high-performing solutions for data science and analytics. The main issue is that you need to build the architecture to create a product that provides value for your customers.

It's about imagination and creativity, and most of the tools are there. In my case, ease of use matters because I lack the knowledge to explore more, but our development team could do that easily.