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.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 Nov 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 Availability Zones, 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. Additionally, the LTR pricing change for Hyperscale will be in effect from January 1, 2025.
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 insightsQuery Acceleration for Delta External Tables (Preview)
An external table is a schema entity that references data stored external to a Kusto database. Queries run over external tables can be less performant than on data that is ingested due to various factors such as network calls to fetch data from storage, the absence of indexes, and more. Query acceleration allows specifying a policy on top of external delta tables. This policy defines a number of days to cache data for high-performance queries. Query Acceleration policy allows customers to set a policy on top of external delta tables to define the number of days to cache. Behind the scenes, Kusto continuously indexes and caches the data for that period, allowing customers to run performant queries on top. QAP is supported by Azure Data Explorer (ADX) over ADLSgen2/blob storage and Eventhouse over OneLake/ADLSgen2/blob storage. Query Acceleration policy We are introducing a new policy to enable acceleration for delta external tables: Syntax .alter external table <TableName> policy query_acceleration 'Policy' Where: <TableName> is the name of a Delta Parquet external table. <Policy> is a string literal holding a JSON property bag with the following properties: IsEnabled : Boolean, required. - If true, query acceleration is enabled. Hot: TimeSpan, last 'N' days of data to cache. Steps to enable Query Acceleration Create a delta external table as described in this document: .create-or-alter external table <TableName> kind=delta ( h@'https://storageaccount.blob.core.windows.net/container;<credentials> ) Set a query acceleration policy .alter external table <TableName> policy query_acceleration ```{ "IsEnabled": true, "Hot": "36500d" }``` Query the table. external_table('TableName') Note: Indexing and caching might take some time depending on the volume of data and cluster size. For monitoring the progress, see Monitoring command Costs/Billing Enabling Query Acceleration does come with some additional costs. The accelerated data will be ingested in Kusto and count towards the SSD storage, similar to native Kusto tables. You can control the amount of data to accelerate by configuring number of days to cache. Conclusion Query Acceleration is a powerful feature designed to enhance your data querying capabilities on PetaBytes of data. By understanding when and how to use this feature, you can significantly improve the efficiency and speed of your data operations - whether you are dealing with large datasets, complex queries, or real-time analytics, Query Acceleration provides the performance boost you need to stay ahead. Get started with Azure Data Explorer. Get started with Eventhouse in Microsoft Fabric.Introducing the enhanced MSSQL Extension for Visual Studio Code
As modern software development evolves, having efficient tools is crucial for developer productivity. The MSSQL extension for Visual Studio Code has been revamped to streamline your SQL Server and Azure SQL workflows. We are excited to announce new UI features for the MSSQL extension, including a redesigned Connection Dialog, advanced Object Explorer filtering, a visual Table Designer, an enhanced Query Results Pane, and a detailed Query Plan Visualizer. These updates make connecting to databases, managing objects, and optimizing queries more intuitive than ever. In this blog post, we’ll dive into these enhancements and show how they can boost your productivity and improve your development experience.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.
Fuel AI Innovation with Microsoft Databases
If data is the fuel that powers AI, then AI is only as good as the data behind it. Right now, it’s never been more important to have a strong data analytics and management foundation in place. To help our customers achieve real transformation with AI, we’ve invested heavily across the Microsoft databases portfolio. That includes developing a comprehensive vision for our databases focused on one goal: enabling you to build the next generation of intelligent applications. This week at Microsoft Ignite 2024, you’ll hear about how Azure helps you create fast, secure, and scalable applications powered by the latest advances in AI. Let me share a quick summary of our top database announcements. Delivering the best enterprise databases At the heart of this vision is our commitment to providing the best enterprise databases, with a strong emphasis on reliability, resiliency, and security and the performance and availability needed to support modern, intelligent applications. We’re proud of the ground-to-cloud flexibility we offer for your workloads, and that’s especially true when it comes to our SQL databases—they’re enterprise-ready and built on the same proven, industry-leading SQL engine, so you have a consistent SQL experience whether you’re on-premises or in the cloud. The latest release, SQL Server 2025, is now in private preview and features built-in AI to simplify intelligent application development and RAG patterns. We also announced the general availability of instance pools in Azure SQL Managed Instance. Instance pools let you provision small, cost-effective 2-vCores instances within a pre-provisioned pool, helping you right-size your workloads when migrating or modernizing in the cloud. In our flagship NoSQL database Azure Cosmos DB, dynamic autoscaling is now generally available, providing cost optimization for nonuniform workloads. With dynamic autoscaling, partitions and regions scale independently so you can scale all the data your AI applications are using in the most cost-efficient way. We’ve also invested in our fully managed open-source databases. This includes new features in Azure Database for MySQL such as zonal resiliency by default, which will be generally available in December 2024. This feature helps you ensure seamless server recovery and business continuity in the face of zonal outages. Also coming to public preview in December, you can use Azure Migrate to discover MySQL instances and their attributes within your environment, assess their readiness for migration, and obtain recommendations on suitable compute and storage options. In addition, we’ve made recent investments in Azure Database for PostgreSQL, including the public preview of elastic clusters on Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server. This enables horizontal scaling through row-based and schema-based sharding, making it easy to build multitenant apps by offloading shard management and operations—such as tenant isolation, split, or online rebalancing of shards—to the service. Unlocking the power of AI with SaaS-ified databases Built on a SaaS foundation, Fabric Databases are a new class of cloud databases that bring together transactional and analytical workloads to create a truly unified data platform. Now in preview, SQL database is the first database engine to come to Fabric, enabling customers to: Build intelligent AI applications faster with built-in vector search, RAG support, and Azure AI integration. Boost productivity with auto-optimizing and auto-scaling databases. Accelerate innovation with Copilot assistance. Support CI/CD using GitHub integration for source control. Ready to give SQL database in Fabric a try? Starting December 3rd, you can join live sessions with database experts and the Microsoft product team and see just how easy it is to get started. View the schedule and register for the series here. You can also register today to join us from March 29 to April 3, 2025, at the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada to learn more. Rounding out our Fabric Databases news, we’re also pleased to announce the public preview of Fabric integration with Microsoft Purview Information Protection, extending the benefits of central, policy-based governance to Fabric items, including the new SQL database in Fabric. Meeting the needs of modern AI developers Beyond a SaaS-ified experience, we also want to provide the best databases for AI developers. We have a lot of exciting developments to share that demonstrate our commitment to building an ecosystem that’s integrated with Azure AI services and tool support to make building AI applications even easier. Let’s start with a recent innovation in Azure SQL Database and now in SQL database in Fabric – native vector support. We’re excited to announce the public preview of a vector data type that gives developers the ability to handle vector data, which is foundational when it comes to building scalable AI-enabled applications. This announcement also includes essential new vector functions, like VECTOR_DISTANCE, VECTOR_NORM and VECTOR_NORMALIZE to support advanced operations, particularly when the embedding model does not return normalized vectors. And, we’re working hard to make vector indexing on Azure SQL even faster with DiskANN, coming in the future. DiskANN is one of the fastest vector indexing algorithms on the market, and its performance and reliability characteristics are a great fit for our customers’ demanding requirements. While Azure Cosmos DB is already fueling some of the most powerful AI applications on the market, we’re committed to making it even better. We're making a number of announcements to boost performance even further, to include the general availability of DiskANN vector index in Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL. We’re also announcing two new search features available in public preview: full-text search, which enables efficient text searches and text-based ranking with BM25, and hybrid search, which combines the benefits of semantic vector search, with the text-based relevance of BM25. These new capabilities help retrieve the most accurate data from the database to power generative AI applications. Azure Database for PostgreSQL is optimized for AI developers, and we continue to expand its capabilities with the addition of DiskANN, now available in preview. The new Semantic Ranker Solution Accelerator, now generally available, provides automated deployment scripts that can be used to provision a semantic ranker model as an Azure Machine Learning inference endpoint. Finally, we introduced graph processing capabilities within Azure Database for PostgreSQL with the Apache AGE graph extension and enhanced the accuracy of your generative AI applications with a solution accelerator that integrates GraphRAG with PostgreSQL graph query capabilities. Finally, automatic parameter tuning is coming soon to Azure Database for PostgreSQL. Using machine learning to optimize workload parameters, your AI applications will exhibit significantly higher performance and scalability. We also have some exciting enhancements for MySQL developers. Azure Database for MySQL now supports the MySQL 9.1 Innovation release, which includes exciting new capabilities, such as JavaScript for stored procedures and vector datatype support, expanding your options for application development and advanced data processing. Integrating your data estate Microsoft Fabric is the foundation of an integrated data estate, bringing together everything from data science, engineering, and warehousing to real-time intelligence and operational databases in one environment. Mirroring provides a modern way of accessing and ingesting data continuously and seamlessly from any database into Microsoft Onelake in Fabric. This capability is now generally available for Azure SQL Database and in preview for Azure SQL Managed Instance. Mirroring is also in private preview for SQL Server 2016-2022, and you can sign-up to participate here. The future of databases is now Microsoft databases are empowering developers with essential tools to create groundbreaking AI applications. Whether you’re a large enterprise or a startup building your first application, Microsoft databases provide the performance, security, and reliability to help you make the most of your investments—and unlock valuable insights that drive business growth. Embracing these technologies today sets the stage for a more innovative, efficient, and secure tomorrow.Announcing SQL database in Microsoft Fabric public preview
The SQL Server and Azure SQL team has embarked on a mission to make building AI apps faster and easier than ever, announcing the Public Preview of SQL database in Microsoft Fabric. This new simple, autonomous and secure, and optimized for AI service will help you in the era of AI. Try it for free today! For more information, including demo videos and customer testimonials, check out the complete release blog here (more updates will land in the Fabric blog in the coming weeks as well): https://aka.ms/announcingsqlfabricGeo 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
