Item: Azure SQL Database
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

My organization within the company basically runs an online trading platform and we have several Azure SQL Databases involved in this. If the databases go down or get slow, our organization isn't making money. Availability is a priority and Azure SQL Database handles that very well for us, without the management overhead.

Pros and Cons

Handling the software updates so we don't have to.
Handling the availability so we don't have to.

There are limits to the size of the database that I'd like to see go away.
We don't have access to the server level counters that I miss but understand why we cannot get them.

Return on Investment

It's cheaper for us than maintaining our own hardware but it's easy to spend more to get more, i.e. price creep.
It's very easy and quick to build out a new database to test/POC a new project.

Alternatives Considered

Amazon Relational Database Service

Amazon's RDS offering is actually very good and is used in other parts of the company, we just have a lot of Azure experience so wanted to leverage that.

Support Rating

If the infrastructure is built correctly, it just works and is easy to set up and configure.

Key Insights

Do you think Azure SQL Database delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Azure SQL Database's feature set?

Yes

Did Azure SQL Database live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Azure SQL Database go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Azure SQL Database again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Blob Storage, Amazon Relational Database Service

Likelihood to Recommend

If you have multiple terabytes of data, the standard Azure SQL Database won't work for you. You can spend more to get this, but I'd rather have it at the lower price point. For pretty much everything else, I'd use it in a heartbeat.

My Azure SQL Database Review

Overall Satisfaction with Azure SQL Database