Azure SQL Managed Instance Updates – #MSIgnite 2024
This Ignite, Azure SQL Managed Instance updates are bringing more flexibility, TCO improvements and new functionalities! GA of Instance Pools Instance Pools are Generally Available! Use instance pools to create cost effective 2 vCore instances. This presents an attractive option for running small SQL Server workloads in a managed service while keeping costs comparable to (or even below) the costs of running SQL Server on Azure VMs. In addition, you can leverage fast instance creation within the pool as well as the ability to move instances in and out of the pool when needed. For more details, see Instance Pools announcement blog post. Fabric Mirroring Preview Fabric Mirroring for Azure SQL Managed Instance enables you to seamlessly replicate your operational data into Fabric OneLake and leverage the power of Microsoft Fabric for analytics, reporting, AI and more without having to set up ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) pipelines. Data is continuously replicated in near-real time into open delta format, and available to all Fabric workloads. That means your mirrored data can be analyzed with Data Warehouse in familiar T-SQL manner, and with other Fabric capabilities as well. To learn more about Fabric Mirroring available in preview for SQL MIs with update policy “always-up-to-date” see announcement blog post. Free SQL MI for everyone (almost) With free offer you can test your SQL workloads in the cloud using Azure SQL Managed Instance for free. This refresh brings support for many subscription types such as: Enterprise Agreement Support, Azure Plan, various Visual Studio and Dev/Test subscriptions, and more. You can now also convert your Managed Instance from free to paid production in two clicks and get the 99.99% uptime SLA as well as a myriad of configuration options. More details on free SQL MI in the latest blog post. Earlier this year… Vector and JSON support in preview Vector support is invaluable for building AI powered applications and experiences on top of your own operational data. With the addition of native vector support it is now even easier to modernize existing applications, by adding AI capabilities that take advantage of the precious data stored in Azure SQL, either via using the new VECTOR_DISTANCE function directly, or using libraries like LangChain, Semantic Kernel and similar. Join the preview of Vector support for Azure SQL Managed Instance. Native JSON support is another new programmability feature available in preview for Azure SQL Managed Instance. With this, processing JSON data just got more performant. All existing JSON functions support new JSON data type seamlessly, and the update is bringing some new functions as well. More about this update in the SQL MI JSON blog post. Both Vector and JSON support previews are available for Azure SQL Managed Instance with Update Policy “Always-up-to-date”. Update Policy is and will be a prerequisite for a lot of future SQL innovation. On the other hand, security updates, patches and platform updates such as Instance Pools, Free SQL MI offer or Next-gen General Purpose are applicable to all instances, regardless of their Update Policy. GA of Disaster Recovery with MI link Disaster recovery capabilities with MI link for SQL Server 2022 are GA! Empower your on-premises SQL Server deployments with Azure and leverage hybrid DR capabilities to improve your resilience. To see MI link DR in action, see demos we’ve prepared for you. Next-Gen General Purpose service tier Next-gen General Purpose service tier brings better performance and up to 500 user databases for the same price. It enables much more flexibility, allowing you to purchase additional IOPS, without increasing reserved storage. You can also scale instances with fine-grained vCore adjustments, such as moving from 4 to 6 vCores or from 8 to 10 vCores. Moreover, instance storage limit is doubled to 32TB, and there is more! To learn about all the benefits Next-gen General Purpose is bringing, see the latest blog post and documentation. Simplified and lower backup prices Backup prices are now lowered and simplified for both Point-in-time restore and Long-term Retention backups across all service tiers in Azure SQL Managed Instance and Azure SQL Database. Prices have been reduced for ZRS and GZRS Backup Storage Redundancy options to match with LRS and GRS respectively. Learn more about simplified and lowered backup pricing here. Learn more Subscribe to SQL MI LinkedIn Newsletter today! Try Azure SQL Managed Instance for free. What's new in Azure SQL Managed Instance? Announcing Microsoft SQL Server 2025. Announcing SQL database in Microsoft Fabric public preview. Read the 2024 recap of all the Azure SQL and SQL Server news this year by Anna Hoffman. Try new SSMS 21 Preview with Copilot with your Azure SQL Managed Instance.Azure SQL Managed Instance pools: General Availability
We are happy to announce new features and General Availability for instance pools. Instance pools are a deployment option in Azure SQL Managed instance service to provision small, cost-effective 2-vCore instances. This way, small instances can cost 50% less compared to non-pooled instances, making it an attractive PaaS target when migrating small on-premises servers or modernizing SQL VMs.
Announcing the General Availability (GA) of Mirroring for Azure SQL Database in Microsoft Fabric
Today, customers Mirror their Azure SQL Database data into OneLake and accelerate their data potential with all workloads in Fabric. Together with Mirroring for Snowflake, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure SQL Managed Instance and many more sources to be added, you can leverage the same Mirroring technology and trivial setup to bring your data estate into OneLake. We also love to learn about your ideas and what you need to run Mirroring in your production workload. Please add your ideas here. With Mirroring we’ve heard the following key benefits from our customers and partners: 1) Reduced total cost of ownership 2) Zero costs, zero ETL and zero code 3) Faster time to operational data, information to derive insightsGeo Zone Redundant Storage (GZRS) is now available for additional Azure SQL database service tiers
Summary: Great news! Geo Zone Redundant Storage (GZRS) is now available for service tiers such as Standard, Premium, General Purpose, and Business Critical. This means more flexibility and enhanced data and backup protection for more service tiers. Details: When it comes to resiliency of a business-critical database, backups are as critical as the source data itself in the event of any disruption. In Azure SQL, Geo Zone Redundant Storage (GZRS) offers the highest level of protection against zonal outages as well as regional outages for any workload. Today when you deploy a Business Critical or General Purpose SKU of Azure SQL database, the following are the options you get for your backup storage redundancy: Below is a screenshot with current backup storage redundancy options for a Business Critical service tier: Choosing the right storage type for SQL Database backups depends on your specific needs for availability, and cost. Locally Redundant Storage (LRS) is cost-effective for less critical data, while Zone Redundant Storage (ZRS), Geo Redundant Storage (GRS), and Geo-Zone Redundant Storage (GZRS) offer increasing levels of protection and availability for more sensitive applications. Here’s a brief description of each of these storage types: Locally Redundant Storage (LRS) Replication: LRS replicates data three times within a single data center in the primary region. Durability: Offers at least 99.999999999% durability over a year. Use Case: Ideal for non-critical data where cost is a primary concern. However, it does not protect against regional disasters. Zone-Redundant Storage (ZRS) Replication: ZRS replicates data across three separate Azure availability zones within the primary region. Durability: Provides a higher durability of 99.9999999999% (12 nines) over a year. Use Case: Suitable for applications requiring high availability and resilience against zone failures, ensuring data remains accessible even if one zone goes down. Geo-Redundant Storage (GRS) Replication: GRS combines LRS with geo-replication, storing three copies in the primary region and three additional copies in a paired secondary region. Durability: Offers the same durability as LRS in the primary region, but with added protection from regional disasters. Use Case: Best for critical data that requires disaster recovery capabilities, though the secondary region is not accessible for reads until a failover occurs. Geo-Zone Redundant Storage (GZRS) Replication: GZRS combines ZRS with geo-replication storing three copies in the primary region that are zone-redundant and three additional copies in a paired secondary region. Durability: Provides the durability benefits of ZRS along with the geo-redundancy of GRS. Use Case: Ideal for mission-critical applications needing both high availability and disaster recovery, ensuring data is protected against both zone and regional failures. If you think about this from the context of database backups: with LRS – the backups are redundant within the zone. If there is an outage in the data center, despite having multiple copies of the backups, the backups are not accessible until the data center comes back online. With ZRS – storage replicates the backups across the zones. If there is an outage in the zone, then backups are available in one of the other zones within the region. With GRS – the backups are redundant across geographic regions. However, within the region they are stored in LRS storage. While you get geo-redundancy your regional resiliency story has the same downside that comes with LRS. With GZRS – the backups are redundant within the region and across geographic regions. This offers the highest level of redundancy and protection from failures. If there is an outage within the zone, backups are available in one of the other zones within the region. If the entire region is unavailable, backups are available in the geo-paired region. Until today, LRS, ZRS and GRS were the only options available for non-Hyperscale database service tiers such as Standard, Premium, General Purpose and Business Critical. We are thrilled to announce that GZRS storage that provides the highest level of durability and resiliency, is now available for Standard, Premium, General Purpose and Business Critical as well. Below is a screenshot with updated backup storage redundancy options for Business Critical service tier: Tip: It is highly recommended to align the redundancy of your data and backups. For instance, if your database is zone redundant, you want your backups also to be zone redundant and either ZRS or GZRS. If you configure your database to be redundant but leave your backups in LRS then, in the event of an outage in the primary zone, your database fails over to another zone within the region because you configured it to be zone redundant. However, since your backups are in LRS, your backups are not available or accessible from another zone within the region. This could result in disruption as your primary database now cannot be backed up until the zone that had the outage is back online. Note: The GZRS storage type for Hyperscale SKU is already available today. Note: There is another announcement about price adjustment (read reduced!) to Backup storage redundancy pricing for all storage types across all Azure SQL DB and Azure SQL MI. More details here - Simplified & lower pricing for Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance backup storage
