Item: Azure Cosmos DB
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We're using Azure Cosmos DB for multiple projects across IT that require a NoSQL data store. We were initially storing JSON data inside of SQL Server, but the volume and speed of this unstructured data were too much.

Pros and Cons

Injects unstructured data at a very high speed.
No real need for administrative work, it indexes everything on it's own.

Cost, it's quite expensive.

Return on Investment

Azure Cosmos DB may be expensive on its own, but it was cheaper than increasing the size/power of our VMs running SQL Server instances enough to keep up with the volume and velocity of the unstructured data.
We got the JSON data out of our SQL Servers and they quit tipping over.

Alternatives Considered

Amazon Redshift and MongoDB

Our development and administration teams are just more familiar with the Microsoft Stack, and there was very little additional knowledge required to put this into production.

Other Software Used

Azure SQL Database, Microsoft SQL Server, Amazon Redshift, MongoDB

Likelihood to Renew

It's efficient, easy to scale, and works. We do have to do a bit of administration, but less now than when we started with this a couple of years ago. Microsoft continues to improve its self-management capability.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you need to store high volumes/velocity of unstructured data, Azure Cosmos DB definitely worth looking at.

Azure Cosmos DB just works

Overall Satisfaction with Azure Cosmos DB