Azure Blob Storage vs. Microsoft SQL Server

Azure Blob Storage is well suited for cases where you are working with different data formats and looking for cost-effective storage solutions based on access frequency. Another area of strength is the encryption of data at rest, and encryption can be managed on your own. However, it may not be appropriate for transferring large data very fast.

Incentivized

Microsoft SQL is ubiquitous, while MySQL runs under the hood all over the place. Microsoft SQL is the platform taught in colleges and certification courses and is the one most likely to be used by businesses because it is backed by Microsoft. Its interface is friendly (well, as pleasant as SQL can be) and has been used by so many for so long that resources are freely available if you encounter any issues.

Incentivized

• Ease of use both through Azure Portal as well as API.
• Cost-effective solution for storing a large amount of data compared to other storage solutions.
• Scalability, Security, and Performance are the other key aspects of Azure Blob Storage that are easily manageable through Admin Console.

Incentivized

• Easy to configure and use with Visual Studio and Dot Net
• Easy integration with MSBI to perform data analysis
• Data Security
• Easy to understand and use
• Very easy to export database and tables in the form of SQL query or a script

Incentivized

• Unstructured data makes it harder to conceptualize what we have but with partners like Panzura that has been a non-issue for us.
• Not always easy to understand the different models or tiers you can pick from when purchasing.

Incentivized

• Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise edition has a high cost but is the only edition which supports SQL Always On Availability Groups. It would be nice to include this feature in the Standard version.
• Licensing of Microsoft SQL Server is a quite complex matter, it would be good to simplify licensing in the future. For example, per core vs per user CAL licensing, as well as complex licensing scenarios in the Cloud and on Edge locations.
• It would be good to include native tools for converting Oracle, DB2, Postgresql and MySQL/MariaDB databases (schema and data) for import into Microsoft SQL Server.

Incentivized

We understand that the Microsoft SQL Server will continue to advance, offering the same robust and reliable platform while adding new features that enable us, as a software center, to create a superior product. That provides excellent performance while reducing the hardware requirements and the total cost of ownership of our solution.

Incentivized

SQL Server mostly 'just works' or generates error messages to help you sort out the trouble. You can usually count on the product to get the job done and keep an eye on your potential mistakes. Interaction with other Microsoft products makes operating as a Windows user pretty straight forward. Digging through the multitude of dialogs and wizards can be a pain, but the answer is usually there somewhere.

Incentivized

Its does not have outages.

Incentivized

SSAS data cubes may some time slow down your Excel reports.

Incentivized

Documentation sometimes appears to be out of date or not fully documented properly with new releases. It is like documentation comes out for a specific version and is quickly out of date. Another issue is documentation is scarce on new releases and only seems to get properly updated (and sometimes is still wrong) once enough people hit the forums to complain.

Incentivized

We managed to handle most of our problems by looking into Microsoft's official documentation that has everything explained and almost every function has an example that illustrates in detail how a particular functionality works. Just like PowerShell has the ability to show you an example of how some cmdlet works, that is the case also here, and in my opinion, it is a very good practice and I like it.

Incentivized

It was good

Incentivized

very hands on and detailed training

Incentivized

Other than SQL taking quite a bit of time to actually install there are no problems with installation. Even on hardware that has good performance SQL can still take close to an hour to install a typical server with management and reporting services.

Incentivized

Azure Blob Storage is the best choice to store files when the app runs in Azure. It also has some advantages over S3, like Shared Access Signatures, that make it easy to control access to files directly via a URL. Azure Blob Storage is very fast and we have not had any major issues with it after using it for several years.

Incentivized

[Microsoft] SQL Server has a much better community and professional support and is overall just a more reliable system with Microsoft behind it. I've used MySQL in the past and SQL Server has just become more comfortable for me and is my go to RDBMS.

Incentivized

SQL server does handle growing demands of a mid sized company.

Incentivized

• Azure has increased the flexibility of where we place data within our organization.
• It has proven to be very reliable and always accessible.

Incentivized

• Increased accuracy - We went from multiple users having different versions of an Excel spreadsheet to a single source of truth for our reporting.
• Increased Efficiency - We can now generate reports at any time from a single source rather than multiple users spending their time collating data and generating reports.
• Improved Security - Enterprise level security on a dedicated server rather than financial files on multiple laptop hard drives.

Incentivized