Microsoft Azure SQL Database Reviews

We are in infrastructure development. We are using this solution with Power BI to consume the data.

We are creating on top of this SQL server. It will be consumed by Power BI for the customers, where they can customize their reports. 

I am delighted to use this solution.

The most valuable feature is the moment of data. It's infused data where we can pull the data and post it immediately.

Also, it can connect to different sources. It's a storage mechanism where you can consume the data and post it into the target systems.

The interface is awesome. It's ready and easy to use.

It is difficult to find any disadvantages when I can only see advantages in using SQL Azure.

When you have a subscription, the subscription itself is not secure. You have to add the user into the directory and you will be able to use it. 

I would like to see integration with Snowflake.

I have been using SQL Azure for a couple of months.

We are using the 2017 version.

It's a stable solution.

It's a scalable product. We have eight members in our organization who are using this solution.

We have plans to continue using this solution.

Technical support is good and always available.

Previously, we did not use another product.

The initial setup is straightforward and the installation is simple.

It only requires you to get a subscription. Once you have downloaded it, you can create it as a resource and you can already use it.

The number of members required to maintain this solution is dependant on the server.

They have standard subscriptions that are not the entire version. If you have a full version of your subscription then you have the entire version that you can download.

When you no longer need it, you can just stop the services. You can reduce the amount you pay, which is an advantage. Essentially, it's a pay and use mechanism.

It's reasonably priced and when you compare it with other products in the cloud environment, it's cheaper.

I would rate SQL Azure a nine out of ten.

We use it as a backend product. We are using the Managed Instance and the SQL Database.

The backup features are the most valuable.

Its compatibility with existing applications can be improved. Its compatibility is currently a little bit imbalanced.

I have been using this solution for about two years.

It is pretty good. It seems very stable.

It has good scalability. We have about a thousand users.

Technical support was very good. I would rate them a ten out of ten.

The initial setup is pretty easy. The deployment took about a day.

It is a good product for any new development or organization.

I would rate SQL Azure a nine out of ten. It is working fine right now, and I am pretty happy with this solution.

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 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 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.

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. 

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.

The solution is used to manage our databases in the cloud.

The hardware is all managed by Microsoft.

The pricing plans when using multiple Microsoft solutions are complex and have room for improvement.

I am currently using the solution.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable.

The technical support is good.

The initial setup depends on the requirements but is easier than the on-prem SQL.

I have seen a return on investment.

The pricing is flexible and can be adapted based on our requirements but the pricing options are complex especially if we are using a VM.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

Maintenance is minimal and can easily be done.

I suggest researching the solution on Microsoft.com where there is a good learning platform before using the solution.