Microsoft Azure SQL Database Reviews

We use this product to implement solutions for clients, so the use case can vary. For example, we built a web-based application for a government environmental protection agency. They issue permits to prospective applicants looking to site factories and other business facilities.

The solution allows us to bring automation to previously manual processes. Payment for permits is made online which eliminates discretion and fraud, and the wider process is streamlined. 

Because the solution is cloud-based it's highly manageable, it makes maintenance of logs, space, storage, and backups much easier compared to a traditional SQL server installation.

If the product could support applications requiring an SQL server for installation, by using SQL Azure as a backend, that would be useful.  

The solution is highly stable.

The product is absolutely scalable.

I was satisfied by the interaction with technical support for this solution. 

The solution is very easy to set up.

With one being expensive and five being competitive, I would give the product a four out of five as it's relatively competitive. It is also important to note that pricing is based on usage.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I have used SQL Azure for the backend tier application. If the customer has the flow change application with an application service, they will use the backend. I always suggest using SQL Server and Azure.

The backup solution in Azure is great, the firewall settings in SQL are very easy to use and work very well. Additionally, the turning process is very good and has improved the SQL services and queries.

SQL Azure could improve by adding more features.

I have used SQL Azure within the past 12 months.

I have found SQL Azure to be stable.

The scalability of SQL Azure is very good.

The support of SQL Azure is very good.

The implementation of SQL Azure is simple.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate SQL Azure a nine out of ten.

SQL Azure can integrate well with other Microsoft Windows services.

The interface for maintaining the solution is very easy to use in the portal.

If we need to deploy data management or services with SQL Azure we need InterSecure.

I have been using SQL Azure for approximately two years.

The scalability of SQL Azure is fine. I needed more stability with Cisco but not with SQL Azure.

The support is good and they are responsive.

The initial setup is straightforward. It took approximately one week to complete.

The deployment of SQL Azure is done by one person.

We have had some issues with the licensing of the solution.

We pay for the solution monthly and we are on a one-year contract. The enterprise edition is very expensive and the standard addition is lacking some functions.

I rate SQL Azure a nine out of ten.

We provide managed services using SQL Azure to our end-clients. The price of services is fixed, and we manage the resources according to their needs.

The on-premise SQL Server licenses can be used since it is on Azure, so it's a significant savings for the customers.

SQL Azure's performance monitoring features need to be improved. It has a pricing calculator, but it would be great if we could get a rough estimate of the pricing based on fewer parameters, like the data size and the scale of the company. 

I started working with SQL Azure about six months ago.

I haven't had any stability issues with SQL Azure, but I've heard that there are frequent down times.

SQL Azure is perfectly scalable. 

I haven't had any complications setting up SQL Azure.

Microsoft controls the licensing for SQL Server and even for the other vendors. They don't play fair with AWS. If anyone wants to migrate to AWS RDS, Microsoft won't let anyone reuse the on-premise SQL Server licenses on AWS. You would need to repurchase those licenses. So it's cheaper to migrate to Azure instead if you already have an on-prem SQL Server license. The Azure platform itself is also much cheaper than AWS. So when you factor in the SQL Server licenses, it's as much 10 times cheaper than AWS RDS. I'm talking about the SQL Server RDS.

I rate SQL Azure eight out of 10. To anyone thinking about adopting this solution, I would recommend that they first decide what applications they need to migrate to Azure. Then you need to estimate the cost. All cloud vendors charge for incoming traffic, especially Azure, and it costs a lot. Around 500GB of data might cost a few thousand dollars.

We use a relational database management system and 90% of the projects I've worked with have used SQL Server. We are partners with SQL Azure. 

The main valuable feature is the auto scaling. In addition, the security features they've implemented on cloud make it a little easier compared to on-prem SQL, they're great. It enables added scalability, and costing can be tweaked and made more reliable, flexible and cost effective.

I think SQL could be improved in terms of ease of use for developers when it comes to performance. For example, enabling suggestions or auto-tune performances, providing results which are higher level recommendations. I know there are tools that performance analyze, but I personally find it to be overly complicated. If they look at performance assistance, add-ons or plugins that might help the developer, focus can be on business logic rather than performance. This is an ongoing issue for me and I'd like to see developers given the flexibility to change those recommendations, it would simplify things. 

I've been using this solution for 20 years. 

SQL's stability is dependent on where it's hosted. 

If you're going into a cluster with multiple width or multiple SQL Servers, deployment becomes a little more tricky. In general, though, the initial setup is relatively easy. 

I recommend this solution and I rate it an eight out of 10. 

We're slowly progressing through the delivery of our production system or landing zone in the cloud. Nothing is in production yet.

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.

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.

We've been dabbling with it for the last couple of years. 

Based on our experience, it is very stable and very reliable.

It has got Microsoft's backbone on it. It is very scalable. At this stage, we don't have many users because we're still busy migrating over to Azure cloud. In the next year, we'll probably have close to a million customers because that's what we've got on our books.

I have interacted with them. They are very good for out-of-the-book solutions, but when we get to integrations with non-Microsoft applications, it can be a little bit more tricky. You also have to involve the vendor of that specific product to deal with problems related to integration, but, in general, Microsoft's support is pretty good. I've never found it to be poor in any way.

For the number of customers we have, we probably only need three or four people, which is not a lot. If you look at it that way, it is actually quite cost-effective.

It is beneficial in terms of cost because you are charged per data unit instead of licensing.

I would absolutely recommend this solution to others. If they are going for Azure, they probably don't have a choice. I would advise others to get used to all the options and ideas of SQL PaaS, SQL managed instances, and SQL on VMs. They should get their head around which one is best for their company. They should make sure that it fits their company's vision of where they want to go with their databases because it may or may not be the best solution for everybody. That's why there are a couple of options, so just make sure to select the right one.

I would rate SQL Azure an eight out of ten. It is best in many ways. There is nothing better than this from Microsoft from the database aspect.

The solution is primarily used as a database.

The solution is very easy to use. It's quite user-friendly.

The product is quite stable. The performance is great and it's reliable.

It's very good as an on-premises deployment.

We've found the solution to be scalable and easy to expand.

It would help if the solution was more secure. It's an aspect they could work on for future releases.

We've been dealing with the solution for many years now. It's been a while.

The solution is stable. there are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The solution scales well. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so with relative ease.

I've never directly dealt with technical support and therefore cannot speak to how helpful or responsive they are. Typically, if we have a problem, we just Google it and look for the answer online.

We don't install it. We just use it. It is my understanding that in Azure we don't install anything. We go on Amazon or Microsoft and make a machine. There's no installation.

You do need to pay a license fee in order to use the product. I can't speak to the exact price.

As we are planning to move to the cloud, we are looking at other options, including PostgreSQL or Microsoft SQL Server. It's my understanding that there is not a big difference between Microsoft SQL on Cloud and the Microsoft SQL Server. We still have lots of experience on Microsoft's SQL Server, and likely our company is still prepared to use Microsoft SQL on Azure, not PostgreSQL. On the other hand, a lot of ERPs nowadays on the market using PostgreSQL. So our developers in the company have experience with this product, PostgreSQL.

We use the product and we offer it to customers as well.

We are planning to move to the cloud in the future.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. Our company prefers SQL Azure. We enjoy its capabilities. I'd recommend the product.

Until now, we don't yet have full experience with it and just we just apply it in very small scenarios - just for feasibility and to take some feasibility tests. We have yet to start converging our ERP. We're checking if it's good or available and if it will fit in some scenarios.

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.

We don't have to manage it much. It is managed by Microsoft, which makes it easy for us because there is no admin overhead for managing the servers. 

It is also easily scalable. During peak hours, it can scale higher.

We have a very small database running on SQL Azure. We have not been able to load bigger systems on it. It is still not something that is feasible. All our heavy-duty systems are on SAP, and it should have more compatibility with other vendors such as SAP. 

Its price can definitely be lower. It is pretty pricey.

We've been using SQL Azure for about three years.

It is stable.

It is easily scalable. We have five people who are working with this solution.

Their technical support is very good for SQL Azure. Basically, based on my experience, we usually don't have any problem with support for Microsoft products. If we are seeking support for something like Linux or something that is not exactly a Microsoft product, it is a little disappointing.

Its price can definitely be lower. It is pretty pricey.

I would rate SQL Azure a seven out of ten. It works like any other SQL database, and it is pretty good.

Azure has multiple use cases. Organizations can use it for hosting infrastructure, for example. There are cloud services that you can utilize. The main purpose of the cloud is that you don't need to set up your own data center, and then you can just use the cloud platforms provided by Azure or AWS, or any other cloud. They all serve the same purpose.

The solution is a stable product. It has a lot of out-of-the-box services. It provides a lot of services that we would typically have to provision on-premise. 

It's easy to use in terms of their portal, which is very nicely organized.

It's a good platform all in all.

The solution has proven to be quite scalable.

We've found the solution to be stable. 

Technical support from Microsoft is very good.

The solution should start covering more regions in Gulf countries and other regions. This is due to the fact that other cloud providers are not locally available. Yet this is what people require here. Their availability in the Middle East and Asia regions needs to improve.

I've been using the solution for a couple of years at this point. It's been a while.

We've found the solution to be very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

The solution is quite scalable. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so with relative ease.

I'm from a technology provider. We provision these services and provide them to other clients. One of the infrastructure environments which we are provisioning on Azure would be used by probably approximately 8,000 to 10,000 users.

In terms of if we plan to continue usage or not, we are just building it on Azure right now. So it will be live in a year or two, something like this.

Technical support is really good. Microsoft support is pretty knowledgeable and responsive. We are happy with the level of service we receive from them.

The solution is a cloud product. You don't need to install anything. There is no installation process to deal with.  

All products are licensed. The cost depends on someone's usage space. The more you use it, the more you pay. Some are billed in terms of fixed cost. For example, if I provision some work with a machine that I pay for it, even if I don't use it. There are multiple ways you could potentially pay.

We are partners.

We are working on the latest version of the solution.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

I would recommend the solution. There are not many cloud providers. Azure and AWS are some of the top providers. These are the two which compete with each other, and both of them have good services. That said, I would recommend Azure for sure.