Microsoft Azure SQL Database Reviews

We are using SQL Server both on Azure and in a Spark environment, on-premises.

The most valuable feature is PolyBase.

The product is very user-friendly.

I feel that the price is high and it could be reduced.

I have more than 14 years of experience in the Microsoft Data Warehouse platform.

SQL Azure is very stable.

This is a very scalable product.

I am the only person in my company who uses it.

I have not been in contact with technical support.

The initial setup is straightforward and I don't find it complex.

Overall, I am happy with this product and I recommend it.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

• Availability and scalability
• Ability to understand the application and not necessarily the structure of your database
• Natural replication of the SaaS service provides efficient availability
• You can choose the geographical replication: Simply open a map and tag the new location of a replication
• Scale tab: You can change the plan of the service in terms of DTUs, point of restore, and auditing

We have configured this solution into a worldwide application based on Microsoft SQL with SQL Azure and with SQL Azure elastic pool.

Maybe the portal should have a more detailed and granular way to query data. You can use API for this purpose.

Azure is working on the query engine in order to give you the ability to analyze a query for performance with insight to improve the load or the time of a query.

I have used SQL Azure for one year along with the other Azure services.

I had no issues during our work.

It is very flexible. In the case of a heavy load period, you don’t see any difference in terms of performance. The advantage with a SaaS service is the normal scalability.

If you don't have Premium support, you need to wait for 24 hours to receive support.

Other databases like PostgreSQL and SQL Server were evaluated. We decided to switch because our .NET application works well with Microsoft solutions.

The configuration was straightforward.

You need to be careful about the size of your database or pool in order to fit it exactly within your budget.

We did not evaluate any other options.

The best use of this product is the combination with other SaaS services. Evaluate communication on premise if you need to.

We like the collaborative nature of the solution. It's the most valuable aspect of the solution.

The stability of the solution is very good.

The availability of resources could be improved.

The solution needs to offer online training to help improve the capacity of teams to manage the SQL.

The pricing is very high.

I've been using the solution for two years so far.

We haven't had any issues with the stability of the solution. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable for us.

We haven't had any issues with the solution, therefore, we haven't required any technical support. I can't speak to the quality of technical support as I've never dealt with them.

In the beginning, we decided to use a specialist to configure all the systems for us and the solution is almost perfect.

The price is very high, especially when you compare it to other solutions. There aren't extra costs, however. All fees are included in the licensing package.

We're simply customers. We don't have any professional relationship with Azure.

I would recommend the solution. It's great.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. I'd give it perfect marks if the pricing was more reasonable and if they offered better learning tools to guide our staff.

What is really helpful about the Azure SQL is that when we have a problem with a query, we can trade information about what indexes we should create on tables. It's really helpful for admin and for developers.

I need something which is in one place so I can automate the Azure data factory, but it's a different tool. It's not easy and in one place, so I can't switch to the other tool and do something there, automate everything there in the on-prem infrastructure, and then have everything in the agent. I can just pick one packet and use it. However, I want to be able to click it and run it. 

We could definitely use something which can automate the work. For example, I know there are a lot of tips like what indexes you should use, or what security features you should look at with your current SQL server. The acquired performance is assured, so some more statistics about acquired performance would be really valuable for the developer and also the administrators who use it. That would be really valuable, but we also need something which automates the work in particular SQL agents. I'm disappointed that it is not in the simple plan and I have to buy a higher plan.

I didn't notice any problems with the performance of this product. It's pretty stable. Computing is working as it should, so it's really good. It's stable, and the performance is really very good. That's what I really like about Azure SQL.

It's very scalable. That's why we like cloud solutions. You just add on every time you need some more performance pages. I just change the plan and it works.

To be honest I have never had a problem that called for technical support. I never had a chance to contact support because it works without any problems. It's the same thing with clients because we work very closely with our customers. Every time they have some problems we get a call from them and can solve the problem for them.

The initial implementation is straightforward. There are a few click-throughs and you have ready to use infrastructure. It usually takes five to ten minutes. Even less.

We use a few different versions. It depends on the project. We use the S-1, 2, and 3, depending on the customer's requirements.

If we compare, for example, the cloud infrastructure and on-prem infrastructure, there are lots of good things about cloud infrastructure because we can scale the product so that every single time when we need more performance, more computing, more storage we can just reach to the higher plan, and we can use it. There is obviously cost reduction because although we still need an on-prem trader for SQL parts, it's not hard like it was in SQL brand because we also had to care about the infrastructure too. Right now, we are concentrating on the software which is good and saves us money. 

I would rate this solution nine out of ten because it offers a lot, including statistics and other things which are very hard to get from Azure. However, you have to specify what you actually would like to monitor, which is not straightforward.

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.

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.

I work for a consulting firm which uses the technology marketing projects from Microsoft and other IT vendors, re-routing the product, and creating a technical and architectural guide;  basically I work on the consulting assignments. I am a lead consultant in one of the leading IT companies in India and I've been implementing bridges and consulting in an architectural support role. I've been using Azure as a stack and that's where my proficiency is. We're partners with Azure. 

This has become a very global solution. The big advantage is the UI which has been simplified. The coding doesn't require much effort so it's valuable in that sense. They have invested a lot in security and compliance so it's also a good product in that area.

The product has many features that might not be explored by many end users because there isn't much technical guidance available. If I'm interested in understanding a particular feature I'd like there to be some kind of explore button that would provide technical in-depth assistance, and that's lacking for now. There is very little technical documentation. 

As already mentioned, additional features should include technical documentation on the product features. Secondly, there could also be some improvement in performance. I know they have done benchmark testing but sometimes performance is lacking. They can improve in that area too. 

I've been using this solution for four years. 

This is a good and stable product. 

I don't think scalability is an issue, it's just a matter of adding more RAM as the users increase. 

Technical support is good but adding technical documentation would really make a difference. 

The initial setup is straightforward and the deployment is very easy because it's a UI based migration. There's no hard coding. I believe deployment takes maybe two or three hours to get the environment set up and to be able to start exploring. We had one person  responsible for deployment and we have three or four people dealing with maintenance in a company of close to 200 people. 

The solution is a little expensive but not too bad in comparison to other products on the market and since I am using the cloud version it's really not too much. There are no additional costs. 

If you're looking for many features in one product with easy usability and UI, then this product is good. You can readily add on features and exploration and all those things. They are adding features all the time so they are creating one large solution, which is like a repository for things like big data and sensors. The SQL Server encapsulates all the requirements.

I would rate this solution a seven out of 10. 

It's a platform that we leverage for multiple uses. There isn't a specific primary use case for the solution.

The concurrency between the amount of the transactional replications and the logging needs to be improved. Also, the GUI, the specific management tool itself, needs some improvement as well.

It's not a feature, but the solution only offers a certain amount of memory and that's limiting. The scalability should be extended to more than two terabytes.  

In terms of stability, because Microsoft is the underlying technology, they are much more stable than Oracle, for example. Since 2014 they did a great job in offering stability, performance and high visibility on the solution, especially in comparison to other competitors.

Technical support has been excellent.

I didn't previously use a different solution.

The initial setup is easy.

I'm not sure what the exact price is, but it's a moderate amount. It's not too expensive.

We use the on-premises version of the solution. I would rate it nine out of ten. I would definitely recommend it to an SMB, a small or medium-sized business.