Azure SQL Database Reviews & Product Details

While Azure SQL has the same capabilities as its AWS and GCP counterparts, especially with logging, monitoring, high availability, and service integration, it is by far the cheapest. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The overall Azure console UI makes it hard to navigate, even within Azure SQL. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Azure SQL provides all necessary tools for Azure WebApps. It is using TSQL language and easy to learn for SQL Server DBAs. It can be scaled and has very interesting High-Availability and disaster recovery functionality. It looks more secure than SQL Server, because it using firewall for access management, It can be managed from Azure portal or SSMS, or using the new SQL Operations Studio tool. It can be tuned automatically and provides some performance insights, so you are able to see the bottlenecks in your deployment quickly and fix these before it comes to issue. It is integrated with Azure monitoring solutions, to see the issues and performance in real-time. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Applications could not be migrated from on-premises to Azure SQL without adjusting the code. Azure SQL does not provides backwards compatibility with SQL Server. Some useful functionality like in-Memory OLTP is missing there, so you could only rely on CPU and Storage performance. It also blocks you from using large enterprise scale databases in Azure. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Azure SQL database is the first step in cloud data platform, allows you using functionality similar to SQL Server in conjunction with modern technologies and features. Database is provided as PaaS, so you don`t have to manage it`s host or perform any system administration. Database using new features of cloud deployment, like automated tuning and performance insights, which allows you to reduce administrative efforts and follow best practices of cloud location. High Availability and disaster recovery features allows replication of database to another region and perform failover in case of Azure location outage. New security functions like firewall rules and virtual network integration allows to restrict access to only locations specified by you, but not make additional problems for your applications connected to these databases. Implementation of elastic pools for several databases will allow you to manage resources needed for every database without additional costs. Different pricing tiers will allow you to pick eactly what you need at current stage of work on your application. You can always increase resources when it will be needed and application will go live. You can configure auto=scaling so database will have more resources in case of increased load, and don`t consume much when it is idle. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Azure SQL database is not SQL Server, it just looks similar and have partially common functionality, in most cases you will have to adjust the code of your applications to have it working with Azure SQL database Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Azure SQL Database works perfectly in pair with Azure WebApps, being provisioned as a PaaS solution it does not need to manage the server running it, so you just need database administration. It is very easy to deploy and connect for your application, at the same time it is very secure, access is being managed by firewall rules, virtual network integration and native SQL Server user access tools. Azure SQL has a number of additional tools for administration, like performance advisor which analyzing performance of queries running across the database and provides recommendations to increase it. Azure SQL Server also allows automatic tuning, like creation of missed indexes or dropping unused ones. Implementation of elastic pools allows you to share resources between several databases, so each database will have enough resources to run queries and don`t consume addition costs being idle. New query editor function, which is currently in preview, allows you to run queries directly from Azure portal. Great high-availability and disaster recovery options, allows you to ensure that database will remain online even in case of disaster. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Unfortunately Azure SQL has not the same set of features of on-premise SQL Server, that means that applications will need rewriting the code to adopt this. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I mainly like this because of the additional feature that comes with it. Some of the best features that I love the most are: Point in time restores that allows you to restore the database to any point in time in past 35 days. Transparent Data Encryption, Dynamic Data Masking. Auditing and threat detection that notifies you on what there is a vulnerability detection.

Ability to scale up and scale down whenever you would like or even schedule it to be on higher tier when busy and lower tier when not.

Allows yo to view and query data within the Azure Portal itself, which is great. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Stability sometimes can be a problem but that is rare occurrence. another issue is the reliability of scaling operations, they can get stuck sometimes but azure support is always ready to assist and resolve the issue. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Snappy response times on the platform allowing for easier use. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sometimes the UI does not seem to align correctly which requires re-sizing Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Azure database is very easy to configure and it allows you to connect to multiple visualization and data processing tools. I really like it Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There's nothing that I dislike, the db is very powerful Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The best thing is not having to manage an actual server or database installation. No more patch Tuesdays to worry about or service pack updates.

Need another copy of that database to test with? Go to the portal and create a copy. You can even create shared resources so as to not incur extra costs.

Want to automate spin up & tear down? Easy peasy with PowerShell. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are times when we've kicked off something that took a while to complete. It was hard to get insight into the progress of that task.

The other part I dislike is support. It can be tough to get support on the product when something goes wrong. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

No having the need to keep it on out physical server.

Ability to move from server with just clicks.

Scalability and mirroring Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

First setup might be a little tricky specially the mirroring Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

You can go from nothing to having a SQL Server instance in less than 30 minutes. You can also expand or contract that instance as you wish thereby increasing performance or decreasing cost. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It does take a fair bit of effort to get started even if you only want to spin up a server. The pricing is confusing and the performance capabilities at each level do not make much sense. Changing performance levels is slow. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.