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 MarisaSee 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 new
SQL MI Restore with valid SAS key failing with Operating System Error 86
We will provide details about a workaround for resolving the "Operating System Error 86" encountered during database restoration from Azure Storage on SQL Managed Instance. In this scenario, the Storage Account was not behind firewall and the credential already had a valid SAS token.Export capability (CETAS) for Data Virtualization in Azure SQL Managed Instance generally available
CETASfor SQL Managed Instance, Generally available as of 18 th May 2023, allows you to export local data from your SQL Managed Instance as Parquet or CSV files to Azure Storage accounts and query this data as an External Table.Introducing Azure SQL Managed Instance Next-gen GP
The next generation of the general purpose service tier for Azure SQL Managed Instance is a major upgrade that will considerably improve the storage performance of your instances while keeping the same price as current general purpose tier. Key improvements in the next generation of general purpose storage include support for 32 TB of storage, support for 500 DBs, lower storage latency, improved storage performance, and the ability to configure the amount of IOPS (I/O operations per second).
