Making application development easy and affordable with MySQL on Azure
Published May 24 2021 07:39 PM 4,579 Views
Microsoft

When we announced Azure Database for MySQL Flexible Server at Microsoft Ignite last year, we made a commitment to the developer community and our customers to provide simplified development experience, increased flexibility, and cost optimization controls, while preserving all the benefits of a managed service. I called out that there is a better way, and it is our strong belief that developers never have to make the hard tradeoff between using a managed solution and self-hosting on IaaS just to get more control of their databases or save costs. 

 

Fast forward to today, it turns out that you share our belief! Thus far thousands of customers are using the Flexible Server deployment option and your feedback continues to shape our product strategy, prioritization, and roadmap. As we continue to innovate on your behalf, today we are excited to announce a free 12-month offer for Flexible Server, additional options for scaling IOPs, and the general availability of Azure Defender support for MySQL. 

 

Customer response 

I want to start by sharing some feedback from our customers and the impact of Flexible Server in tackling real world challenges. A common theme around these stories is a reminder about how important developer productivity, cost, and continuous availability is to our customers, especially as they tackle real life challenges head-on. We’re extremely grateful to be able to enable our customers to achieve their goals, and we’re thankful that we could play a small role towards their success.  

 

“We are a group of volunteers working for a non-profit organization to configure/deploy Moodle on Azure for an online learning solution for our community, which was essential for us during and post COVID. Being a non-profit, we run on thin budgets and our traffic is unpredictable. Azure Database for MySQL Flexible Server Burstable SKU enabled us to develop and test the solution at a significantly lower cost. It provided us with the right blend of performance and cost allowing us to focus on solution without any operational overhead for us” 

– Rahim L, Solution Architect 

 

Below is feedback from customers whose mission it is to entertain millions of people with streaming services and Gaming solutions, 24x7.  These solution patterns require continuous availability and high performance to serve users without interruption and to accomplish this at minimal cost. MySQL Flexible Server is enabling these customers to run mission critical applications efficiently and with piece of mind. 

 

“Being South Asia's largest music and audio streaming service, performance, scale and high availability of the MySQL Database is critical for us to provide the millions of our users with a great listening experience round the clock. Our major motivation to move to Azure Database for MySQL Flexible Server is to leverage its performance stability, zone redundant high availability, and managed maintenance window feature which will allow us to control and minimize the downtime caused by monthly patching to ensure we minimize the interruptions for our end users” 01.JioSaavn-Primary-White-on-Navy.png

– Ramesh Sudini, Head of Engineering at JioSaavn 

 

“We have successfully gone through CBT for game title Time Defender in Japan on MySQL Flexible Server. We prefer MySQL for our games and performance, reliability and high availability of the MySQL server is very critical for us. We evaluated Azure Database for MySQL Flexible Server and it perfectly met our performance and reliability goals. We love the managed maintenance window feature which gives us flexibility to schedule our maintenance window in addition to zone redundant HA which enable to have high availability. As all features are proved, we will launch game with flexible server in CY21 Q3.” timedefender.png

Peter Lee, Lead of Service Development Unit, Vespa Inc.

 

Today, I’m extremely excited to make application development with Azure Database for MySQL Flexible Server more affordable, more secure, and even simpler. 

 

Free 12-month offer! 

Beginning June 15, 2021, new Azure users can start to develop and deploy applications leveraging Azure Database for MySQL Flexible Server (Preview) by taking advantage of our 12-month free account offerThis offer will be available with an Azure Free Account and provides up to 750 hours of Azure Database for MySQL - Flexible Server and 32GB of storage per month for the first 12 months. The Azure free account offers access to many other Azure services such as Azure Kubernetes Services, Azure App Services, and Azure VMs, which you can use to develop, test, and run your application for free for 12 months. 

 

Gain increased cost efficiency by scaling IOPs independent of storage 

Database applications often need sufficient IOPs to optimally perform IO intensive workload tasks. Azure Database for MySQL Flexible Server now offers the ability to scale IOPs on-demand and independently of provisioned storage size, giving developers more freedom and control. If your workload requires more IOPs only for a few hours to run a nightly data load job, or just for a one-time migration to Azure Database for MySQL Flexible Server, you can now scale IOPs on-demand to increase the speed of the job, and then scale down IOPs to save costs without incurring database downtime. Users continue to have the flexibility to increase provisioned storage in 1 GB increments, which automatically provides an incremental 3 baseline IOPs.

 

Ability to scale IOPs independent of storage with MySQL Flexible ServerAbility to scale IOPs independent of storage with MySQL Flexible Server

 

Enjoy additional free IOPs 

Beginning July 2021, we’re also increasing the free IOPs for the Flexible Server deployment option from 100 to 300 and raising the minimum allowed provisioned storage to 20GB. This will give our users access to more IOPs for improved performance for IO intensive workloads without additional costs. 

 

After this change, your free IOPs available with provisioned storage size will increase as shown in the table below:  

 

Currently  Beginning July, 2021 

Max(100, 3 * [Storage provisioned in GB]) IOPs

300 + 3 * [Storage provisioned in GB] IOPs 

 

For example, if you have provisioned 20GB of storage, you currently get 100 IOPs. After the July 2021 update, with 20GB of provisioned storage you will get 360 IOPS (300 + 3 * 20GB). 

 

MySQL 8.0 now available in Flexible Server 

Immediately after the Flexible Server (Preview) release, many of you requested that we prioritize support for the latest MySQL 8.0 version. I’m happy to share that the MySQL 8.0.21 release is now available oFlexible Server, so you can now enjoy all the service capabilities and start developing with MySQL 8.0 version. 

 

Other major updates 

In addition to the exciting announcements above, Azure Database for MySQL Flexible Server now also provides: 

  • Enhanced flexibility to customize enforcement of SSL and minimum TLS version. To learn more, see Connect to Azure Database for MySQL - Flexible Server with encrypted connections. 
  • A new connect CLI command that helps you easily test, validate, and troubleshoot your client and server configuration to connect and run queries against your MySQL database. To learn more, see Test database server connection. 
  • Availability of Flexible Server in Brazil South, France Central, and Switzerland North regions. As we add support for more regions, be sure to refer to Azure regions for the latest detail on regional availability. 

 

Announcing General Availability of Azure Defender for Open-source Relational Database 

We also continue to invest in bringing the latest security and compliance features to MySQL. We’re excited to share that Azure Defender for Open-source Relational Database, which offers comprehensive security for MySQL, is now generally available. Azure Defender support for MySQL constantly monitors your servers for security threats and detects anomalous database activities that could indicate potential threats to Azure Database for MySQL. 

 

With this announcement, you can now protect your open-source databases with Azure Defender, expanding and strengthening your protection across your entire database estate. We recommend protecting production MySQL servers with Azure Defender as part of your overall security strategy. 

 

Looking ahead 

With Azure Database for MySQL Flexible Server, we’re on a mission to provide greater flexibility and make your application development easier and more affordable. In upcoming months, we plan to extend our support to Terraform deployment and automation, expand into additional Azure regions, and look forward to the announcement of General Availability for Azure Database for MySQL Flexible Server. We’re always eager to hear about how you plan to use the new Flexible Server deployment option to drive innovation for your business and applications. Please continue to send in your valuable feedback by emailing us at Ask Azure DB for MySQL. 

 

In the interim, please take the time to learn more about our Azure Database for MySQL managed service. If you’re interested in diving deeper, Flexible Server documentation is a great place to start. Lastly, be sure not to miss out on taking advantage of the free 12-month offer! 

-Sunil Kamath

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‎Oct 10 2021 11:54 AM
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