Simplified & lower pricing for Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance backup storage
Today as you deploy your Azure SQL database or Azure SQL managed instance, one of the important decisions to be made is the choice for your backup storage redundancy (BSR). I say it's important because the availability of your database depends on the availability of your backups. Here’s why. Consider the scenario where your DB has high availability configured via zone redundancy. And, let's say, your backups are configured non-zone redundant. In the event of a failure in the zone, your database fails over to another zone within the region, however your backups won't, because of their storage setting. Now, in the new zone, the backup service attempts to backup your database but cannot reach the backups in the zone where the failure happened causing the logs to become full and eventually impacting the availability of the database itself. As you create the Azure SQL database,the choices for backup storage redundancy are: Locally Redundant Storage (LRS) Zone Redundant Storage (ZRS) Geo Redundant Storage (GRS) and Geo Zone Redundant Storage (GZRS) Each of these storage types provides different levels of durability, resiliency and availability for your databases and database backups. Not surprisingly, each storage type also has different levels of pricing, and the price increases significantly as the protection level increases with GZRS storage type almost 4-5x LRS. Choosing between resilience and cost optimization is an extremely difficult choice that the DB owner must make. We are thrilled to announce that, starting from 11/01/2024, the backup storage pricing is now streamlined and simplified across Azure SQL database and Azure SQL Managed Instance. Bonus – we even reduced the prices 😊 The price changes apply to the Backup Storage Redundancy configuration for both Point-in-time and Long-Term Retention backups, across the following tiers of Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance: Product Service Tier Azure SQL Database General Purpose Business Critical Hyperscale Azure SQL Managed Instance General Purpose Business Critical Next Generation General Purpose (preview) As we made the changes, following were the principles we adhered to: No price increase BSR pricing for ZRS is reduced to match the BSR pricing for LRS BSR pricing for GZRS is reduced to match the BSR pricing of GRS BSR pricing for GRS/GZRS will be 2x that of LRS/ZRS Type of backups What is Changing PITR BSR pricing for ZRS is reduced by 20% to match pricing for LRS for all service tiers in Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance except for Azure SQL Database Hyperscale service tier. BSR pricing for GZRS is reduced by 41% to match pricing for GRS for all service tiers in Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance. LTR BSR pricing for ZRS is reduced by 20% to match pricing for LRS for all service tiers in Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance. BSR pricing for GZRS is reduced by 41% to match pricing for GRS for all service tiers in Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance. As an example, lets take East US as the region and look at the pricing for backup storage redundancy for Point in Time storage before and after the changes: For General Purpose/Business Critical service tiers the pricing would now be: Backup Storage Redundancy Current price New Price Price change LRS $0.10 $0.10 None ZRS $0.125 $0.10 20% less GRS $0.20 $0.20 None GZRS $0.34 $0.20 41% less For Hyperscale service tier, the new pricing would now be: Backup Storage Redundancy Current price New Price Price change LRS $0.08 $0.08 None ZRS $0.1 $0.10 None GRS $0.20 $0.20 None GZRS $0.34 $0.20 41% less Similarly, Backup storage redundancy prices for Long Term Retention backups in East US would be as follows: Backup Storage Redundancy Current price New Price Price change LRS $0.025 $0.025 None ZRS $0.0313 $0.025 20% less GRS $0.05 $0.05 None GZRS $0.0845 $0.05 41% less As a customer, the decision now becomes much easier for you. If you need regional resiliency: choose Zone Redundant Storage (ZRS) If you need regional and/or geo resiliency: choose Geo Zone Redundant Storage (GZRS). If the Azure region does not support AvailabilityZones, then choose Local Redundant Storage for regional resiliency, and Geo Redundant Storage for geo resiliency respectively. Please Note: The Azure pricing page and Azure pricing calculator will be updated with these new prices soon. The actual pricing meters have already been updated.Always Encrypted Assessment in SQL Server Management Studio 21
Discover the new Always Encrypted Assessment feature that simplifies the encryption process for your database columns. This powerful tool evaluates your tables and columns, identifying which ones are suitable for encryption and highlighting any that aren't due to data type or constraints. With detailed insights and the ability to export results, this feature streamlines your data protection strategy. Don't miss out on learning how to make the most of this innovative addition to SQL Server Management Studio 21!What's New in SQL Server and Azure SQL: 2024 Year in Review
Read the 2024 recap of all the Azure SQL and SQL Server news this year or catch the live episode! If you missed the episode, you can find them all at https://aka.ms/AzureSQLYT. This was a special episode because it was live streamed from the PASS Data Community Summit in Seattle. I had the honor to speak to some of the SQL leaders at Microsoft. You can read this blog to get all the updates and references mentioned in the show. Without further ado, here’s the 2024 Year in Review: Azure SQL Database Elastic pools for Hyperscale are now GA Azure SQL Database free ‘forever’ database (details) Copilot in Azure SQL Database (preview) Natural language to SQL in the portal Query Editor (preview) Serverless for Hyperscale (GA) Zone redundancy is now available to be enabled for Hyperscale – Named Replicas in Azure SQL Database (preview). Maintenance windows for Azure SQL Database Hyperscale elastic pools is now available in public preview. Azure SQL Database Hyperscale elastic pools is now available in public preview in Azure U.S. government regions. Guidance on how to migrate from Amazon QLDB to ledger tables in Azure SQL Database Lower auto-pause delay minimums for serverless databases (now 15 minutes!) (GA) Simplified subscription limits Maintenance window support for Hyperscale named replica Shrink for Hyperscale (preview) dbcompat 160 as default for new databases (GA) Enhanced time-based audit log filtering with fn_get_audit_file_v2 UNISTR and || operators to escape Unicode characters and combine characters/binary strings (preview) License-free standby replica (GA) Availability metric in the portal (preview) Elastic jobs (GA) Public preview: Label-based access control for Azure SQL Database using Microsoft Purview policies Advance Maintenance Notifications (GA) Maintenance window support for Hyperscale elastic pools (preview) Mirroring Azure SQL Database to Microsoft Fabric (preview) Server Audit redesign worldwide availability Hyperscale PASS announcements: Max size to 128 TB (GA), log rate increase to 150 mbps (preview), continuous priming (preview) Data virtualization support (Polybase!) (preview) AI Native vector type and functions are in preview in SQL DB and SQL MI SQL Server and Azure SQL can work for hybrid search with Azure AI services or frameworks like LangChain and Semantic Kernel. Azure AI Search works with all deployment options for SQL. A bunch of really cool samples and blogs! Similarity search with FAISS and Azure SQL Tools and developer Data API Builder (GA) (including in-memory caching) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 20 (GA) was released earlier this year, and the upcoming release of SSMS 21 Preview 1 was just announced, which will include many exciting capabilities. Erin Stellato has been collecting feedback through many forums, including blogs. Read the release blog here. SSMS 21 copilot (private preview) Preview release of SDK-style SQL projects in Visual Studio 2022 SSDT for ARM64 in Visual Studio (preview) MSSQL Extension for VS Code v1.25.0: Rich UI features (Preview). Dev Container for Data API Builder (DAB) and SQL Server came out: https://aka.ms/try-dab Dev Container templates for Azure SQL Database (Demo) Use the debugger in SSDT New JSON data type (preview) for Azure SQL DB and SQL MI RegEx in Azure SQL Database (private preview) Several Microsoft.Data.SqlClient versions were released including a 6.0 preview JDBC driver updates and hotfixes System.Data.SqlClient was deprecated ODBC Driver 18.4 Hotfix for OLE DB driver SqlPackage and DacFx updates Azure SQL trigger (GA) Database watcher for Azure SQL (preview) Azure SQL Managed Instance 12-month free Azure SQL Managed Instance Instance pools public preview refresh The next generation of General Purpose Managed Instance (preview) Azure SQL Managed Instance General Purpose (GP) instances now have zone-redundant configuration available as an option (preview), billing began as well Premium-series memory optimized hardware is now available in all regions Premium-series memory optimized business critical, 16TB of storage is now available Business critical gives more granularity over the number of vCores Cross-subscription database copy and move has been updated to include support for online, cross-instance database copy and move operations across all instances under the same Azure tenant Authenticate with Microsoft Entra ID using windows principals metadata (preview) Advance Notifications for planned maintenance (GA) Update Policy configuration of Managed Instance (GA) Native JSON data type support (preview) Online disaster recovery (DR) GA between SQL Server 2022 and Azure SQL Managed Instance External REST Endpoint Invocation for Managed Instance (private preview) Vector support (private preview) Regular Expressions (private preview) SQL Server on Azure VMs Provision Premium SSD v2 Storage within the Azure portal (preview) Automated Patching Retirement and replacement with Azure Update Manager, which also went GA earlier this year New I/O analysis and best practices tabs in portal (preview) Place your SQL Server workloads on an Azure Elastic SAN for improved performance, throughput, and cost (GA) Deploy your SQL Server failover cluster instance (FCI) by using an Azure Elastic SAN (preview) New memory and storage optimized Mbsv3 size series (GA) New compute optimized Azure FXv2 series (preview) SQL Server on Linux AD utility, adutil, is available on RHEL 9 and Ubuntu 22.04 Sample for SQL Server on Linux Azure VM and Azure AI Search Always On Availability Group on AKS with DH2i’s DxOperator and Rancher by SUSE Enabling Azure Key vault support for SQL Server on Linux Azure Arc enabled SQL Server Azure SQL migration assessment support in portal for Azure Arc enabled SQL Server (preview) Extended Security Updates for SQL Server 2014 are available through Arc Move resources across resource groups and subscription (GA) Inventory of availability groups is now GA Inventory of failover cluster instances is now GA Manage automated backups at the instance and database level (preview) Inventory of SQL Server Services (SSIS, SSAS, SSRS, and PBIRS) is now in public preview SQL Server There have been several CUs for SQL Server various versions, including several security updates. Updates for SCOM Management Packs for SQL Server, RS, AS (7.6.0.0) SQL Server 2014 reached end of support on July 9, 2024. A ton of AI samples with SQL Retirement of SQL Server Stretch Database SQL Server 2022 is EAL 2 Common Criteria certified Migrations Migrate Arc enabled SQL Servers with Azure Arc enabled migrations experience (Private Preview) Price and performance optimized Next-gen Azure SQL Managed Instance General Purpose service tier is now available as a migration recommendation Simplify you Azure SQL migration journey with a single click SHIR configuration Migrate larger scale Oracle databases to Azure SQL using Azure Database Migration Service in SSMA 10 Migrate large scale DB2 databases to Azure SQL using Azure Data Factory in SSMA 9.5 Improve your SQL migration success rate with early validations for login migrations with Azure SQL Migration extension in Azure Data Studio Accelerate your SQL migration journey by provisioning targets using the ARM templates generated by Azure SQL Migration extension in Azure Data Studio Fabric and Power BI October Fabric Update October Power BI Update Ignite Microsoft Ignite is just two weeks away. I promise you we have some exciting announcements planned for there as well. Please be sure to follow along and check back on the blog site updates! Data Exposed We released so many episodes of Data Exposed this year (around 60!). It’s such an honor to get to learn and share about all the new and exciting things the team is working on, and stories from MVPs and customers. Thank you READER and VIEWER for supporting the show by following along! Until next time… That’s it for now! We release new episodes on Thursdays at 9AM PT and new #MVPTuesday episodes on the last Tuesday of every month at 9AM PT at aka.ms/DataExposedyt. Having trouble keeping up? Be sure to follow us on X to get the latest updates on everything, @AzureSQL. We hope to see you next YEAR, on Data Exposed :-) --Anna and MarisaAnnouncing enhancements to Azure SQL Database Hyperscale
We are thrilled to announce a set of significant updates to Azure SQL Database Hyperscale. These updates are designed to provide more scalability, faster data processing, and improved reliability, particularly during failovers Increased maximum database size We are pleased to announce that the maximum database size in Azure SQL Database Hyperscale has increased from 100 TiB to 128 TiB. This enhancement is now generally available (GA) for single Hyperscale databases and will be released later for Hyperscale elastic pools. This expansion allows for even greater flexibility and capacity to manage large datasets, accommodating the needs of businesses with substantial data storage requirements. Higher limits for transaction log generation rate In our continuous effort to improve performance, the log generation rate in Azure SQL Database Hyperscale has been increased from 100 MiB/s to 150 MiB/s. The increased limit for the transaction log generation rate limit is currently in limited public preview, and you can sign up using this form: link. The higher log generation rate means faster data processing and better handling of write-intensive workloads. This ensures that your applications run smoothly and efficiently, even during peak usage times. Whether you're dealing with bulk data inserts, high-volume transaction processing, real-time data ingestion, or rebuilding of large indexes, the enhanced log generation rate provides the performance boost needed to keep your systems responsive and reliable. Continuous priming One another new feature we are introducing is continuous priming. This innovative feature is designed to optimize performance during failovers by priming secondary compute replicas. Here’s how it works: Continuous priming collects information about the most frequently accessed pages in all Hyperscale compute replicas, both primary and secondary. This information is aggregated at the Hyperscale storage layer (page servers). All Hyperscale compute replicas then use this list of most frequently accessed pages, which represents the typical customer workload, to “prime” both the buffer pool (BP) and the resilient buffer pool extension (RBPEX) with any missing pages. This “priming” process is done continuously to keep up with changes in the customer work set. With continuous priming, local HA replicas will prime themselves with the pages being used in the primary replica. This ensures that performance remains consistent and optimized, even during failovers. Please note that continuous priming is not applicable to Hyperscale databases with serverless compute and named replicas. If you’re interested in enrolling in this preview, please sign up using the provided link. Conclusion We are confident that these new features and enhancements will significantly benefit your operations, providing more scalability, faster data processing, and greater reliability. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to innovate and improve Azure Database Hyperscale to meet your needs. Please share your feedback and questions by leaving a comment; you can also email us at sqlhsfeedback AT microsoft DOT com. We are eager to hear from you all!See in action DR between SQL Server 2022 and SQL MI
Introduction Last month in October 2024, we’ve announced the general availability of additional SQL Managed Instance (MI) link features with SQL Server 2022, bringing robust two-way disaster recovery (DR) capabilities. With bi-directional failover, organizations can now seamlessly switch between SQL Server 2022 and Azure SQL Managed Instance, providing modern and flexible BCDR solution for hybrid environments. SQL MI link demo videos To help you get up to speed with MI link capabilities, we’ve published four demo videos. Read Scale-out with SQL Managed Instance Link – Learn to set up read-only database replicas on Azure SQL Managed Instance, ideal for scaling read operations while keeping data in sync with SQL Server. Planned Failover (DR Drill) with MI Link – Watch a guided demo of planned failovers, showing how SQL MI link enables DR drills through SSMS, enhancing capabilities of hybrid setups. Hybrid DR capability can help you meet DORA (see also EIOPA-DORA) requirements for operational resilience. Database Migration to SQL MI – This video illustrates how to migrate databases from SQL Server to SQL Managed Instance, highlighting a simplified, step-by-step process for SQL Server versions from 2016 onwards. Creating MI Link from SQL MI to SQL Server – Explore the process of establishing a link from Azure SQL Managed Instance (with Update Policy SQL Server 2022) back to SQL Server 2022. This capability enables data mobility and can help with meeting regulatory requirements and similar scenarios. These videos provide essential walkthroughs, helping you leverage Azure SQL Managed Instance link features to elevate disaster recovery, scaling, and migration in your SQL Server environments. Explore the capabilities today and prepare for seamless DR and hybrid cloud management! If you'd like to see more videos covering MI link capabilities, please let us know in the comment section what you'd like us to cover! Learn more about SQL MI link and SQL MI Free offer for Azure SQL Managed Instance Online disaster recovery between SQL Server 2022 and Azure SQL Managed Instance is now GA Link feature for Azure SQL Managed Instance documentation Update Policy for Azure SQL Managed Instance Azure SQL Managed Instance - What’s newAnnouncing Azure Data Tech Groups v2.0: Big News for User Groups and Members
Two years ago, Microsoft publicly launched the newAzure Data Community webpage, and created Azure Data Tech Groups utilizing Meetup. Prior to this, many user groups used PASS resources to host their websites, virtual meetings, manage members and more. Over the following months, we onboarded qualified user groups to the new Azure Data Meetup network and began providing Microsoft Teams access to help groups meet virtually through the pandemic. All of our community efforts were to empower the community, provide you with resources to help you continue to connect with one another, learn and develop your skills, and grow in your careers. V 1.0 of Azure Data Tech Groups had one great big limitation: groups that didn't use Meetup had to start or we weren't able to include them. This had the greatest impact on the community in LATAM, the Middle East and APAC, as they're less likely to utilize Meetup. This latest initiative will expand access to our network to more groups globally, groups that use their own website, LinkedIn, HDX or various ways to connect with members.Preview release of SDK-style SQL projects in Visual Studio 2022
SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) in Visual Studio provides a development environment for SQL Server, Azure SQL, and Synapse Data Warehouse databases based on SQL projects. SQL projects enables database development to directly integrate with DevOps workflows, including functionality for connected databases to be converted into code and for databases to be updated from the SQL projects build artifact (.dacpac). Microsoft.Build.Sqlis a project SDK that modernizes the well-established capabilities of SQL Server Data Tools, improving the flexibility and compatibility of SQL projects. In the preview 2 release of Visual Studio 17.12, Microsoft.Build.Sql SDK-style SQL projects begin their preview availability in Visual Studio as the component “SQL Server Data Tools, SDK-style (preview).”
