SQL Azure Reviews

SQL Azure is used for the replication of a CRM database. if get information from this database and try to replicate it on other servers and other systems. I'm getting the transactional data information.

The most valuable feature of SQL Azure is centralized authentication because I'm using the domain, user name, and password, for Microsoft 365 account with multifactor authentication and the security has been working well.

I was using a user list for connecting a program in OTF for getting information. The connection in SQL Azure can improve by being easier because at the moment I have to use private certificates for user authentication. I had to do additional configuration to have the connections.

I have been using SQL Azure for approximately six months.

SQL Azure is stable, I have not had any issues.

The scalability of SQL Azure is easy to do.

We have a lot of people in my organization using this solution. We have a large company.

I have not used support.

The initial setup of SQL Azure is difficult and complex. I have to use a lot of certificates, private keys, and public keys to establish a connection.

SQL Azure is a really good tool. I recommend using this solution instead of a normal SQL server, its an improvement,

I rate SQL Azure a nine out of ten.

It is basically hosting the backend of our application that we write as a software development company. We're moving our educational timetabling software, which was historically an on-premise installation, to a cloud-based service offering for customers.

It is pretty much version-less in the sense that we are using whatever is presented to us and available. We are purely using the cloud-based services from Azure hosted in the cloud, which obviously and technically is version-less to some degree. We are using SQL Azure, app services, Application Gateway, key vaults, and storage solutions within Azure. It is relatively simple but sufficient for our needs at the moment.

We predominantly don't use the GUI interface. We are using Terraform as our infrastructure and code provider to manage and maintain all of the Azure components that we are using. They're offering all the integration and providing it through the APIs.

We have come from hosting on-premise for customers, or they've done it themselves with SQL. We've now taken a cloud offering for the equivalent services of standard database management and the inbuilt backup and restore offerings. The scalability is probably the biggest feature that we are benefiting from by being in the cloud.

We haven't had any major issues that have prevented us from doing stuff fundamentally. For its implementation, sometimes, it is complicated to understand what your needs are. It would be good to have a few use cases that provide different cloud variations that match on-premise installations and show how they can be moved to the cloud a bit better.

Its pricing is complicated and can be improved. We need a better offering. Making it cheaper is always a good thing for us.

I have been using this solution for two years.

We haven't had any issues. It has been up and available and working when we needed it to. We haven't had any outages that we're aware of.

There are not many users at the moment because we're still in pre-production. We're sort of in beta testing at the moment.

It probably has 50 users currently. It is not a very large tool. We are planning to expand its usage as we build out our actual software ourselves, which we're still working on. We'll be making that available to customers, and we'll be offering that as a global opportunity for customers.

I have not been in touch with their technical support.

We were just using Microsoft on-premise SQL, and we've migrated to Azure in the cloud. It basically is like for like, as far as we're concerned.

It depends on which area you're coming from. If you're using the GUI, it's relatively simple. Understanding what your needs are sometimes is a bit more complicated. Understanding the availability of things like Elastic pools took us a little bit of time to get our heads around but, otherwise, it is pretty simple. They could provide some use cases for this.

It is hard to provide the deployment duration because it wasn't just Azure on its own that we were having to deal with. We were taking our on-premise product and converting it. Preparing the infrastructure and doing it via the likes of Terraform took us probably about three months overall, but that was more about getting up to speed on the tools to do it, as opposed to individual components such as SQL.

The pricing is actually complicated, and that is probably one downside of it. In some respects, although we can plan for the costs on a month-by-month basis, we are finding it hard to project our costings for it. 

Fundamentally, Microsoft is offering two pricing models, and it is challenging to understand the differences between the two. We're basically on the DTU model at the moment. That may change in the future as the size grows, but it is one of those things that we'll end up monitoring as we progress. 

At the moment, to get a reasonable response, generally, the price is a little high for us, but it is one of those things for which we know that we can do improvements on our code. So, it is not just the service that's the problem; it is some of the things that we need to do as well.

I would recommend it depending upon the use case. If you need an on-premise service, then you would choose the on-premise SQL, and if you need a cloud-based one, then I'd suggest SQL on the cloud. The scalability of SQL in the cloud is far simpler than the scalability of SQL on-premise. This is one benefit that the cloud edition has over the on-premise version that people could consider.

I would rate SQL Azure an eight out of 10.

We're slowly progressing through the delivery of our production system or landing zone in the cloud. Nothing is in production yet.

Its cost benefit is most valuable because you are charged per data unit instead of licensing. You can easily migrate your on-premise SQL to the cloud with a managed instance. That's what it is designed to do. It is easy to take your on-premise or older SQL instance and move it to the cloud. It makes it easy to get off your on-premise SQL and start utilizing the cost benefit of the cloud.

I'm not really a SQL DBA, so I can't go into the depths of the areas that need to be improved. They can maybe make it a bit easier to educate people on how to develop SQL Server in Azure. They can provide some free seminars and webinars and more training in general for easier migration. I know there is some stuff on Microsoft learning, but it would be helpful and useful to have more up-to-date content.

We've been dabbling with it for the last couple of years. 

Based on our experience, it is very stable and very reliable.

It has got Microsoft's backbone on it. It is very scalable. At this stage, we don't have many users because we're still busy migrating over to Azure cloud. In the next year, we'll probably have close to a million customers because that's what we've got on our books.

I have interacted with them. They are very good for out-of-the-book solutions, but when we get to integrations with non-Microsoft applications, it can be a little bit more tricky. You also have to involve the vendor of that specific product to deal with problems related to integration, but, in general, Microsoft's support is pretty good. I've never found it to be poor in any way.

For the number of customers we have, we probably only need three or four people, which is not a lot. If you look at it that way, it is actually quite cost-effective.

It is beneficial in terms of cost because you are charged per data unit instead of licensing.

I would absolutely recommend this solution to others. If they are going for Azure, they probably don't have a choice. I would advise others to get used to all the options and ideas of SQL PaaS, SQL managed instances, and SQL on VMs. They should get their head around which one is best for their company. They should make sure that it fits their company's vision of where they want to go with their databases because it may or may not be the best solution for everybody. That's why there are a couple of options, so just make sure to select the right one.

I would rate SQL Azure an eight out of ten. It is best in many ways. There is nothing better than this from Microsoft from the database aspect.

We use the public cloud model of this solution. 

With Azure, we can achieve very high workloads (~6K queries/min) and, if necessary, scale databases in real-time with only one minute of downtime for our customers. It enables us to scale up on demand and to scale down when needed. 

The most valuable feature of Azure Database is the read-scaleout one: in Premium and Business tiers, the logic single DB consists of 4 identical DBs, the main one (writable) and three read-only synchronized copies; in our application we can use the three read-only copies for almost all of the read-only query and this allows workload distribution and minimizes the concurrency in write operations.

They have good documentation. It's concentrated information. 

Migrating existing application to SQL database had many problems, developing a new app for Azure Database not. 

Their support is nice but frequently their responses aren't effective. 

The documentation is always updated with the latest features but the documentation for the database features should be better. It doesn't specify when specific features will be released. The documentation needs improvement. They should improve the way they explain the information to the market.

It should have better support for UTF 8 (a feature already present on the on-premises version of SQL Database 2019) a for Hadoop integration.

It is stable. 

It is very scalable. 

The initial setup was incredibly easy. Moving from a standard tier to a business tier is not so easy and the documentation isn't so clear the presence of the read scale out copies.

I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

• Cloud products reduce the cost of the production of software products
• You do not have to buy the product at the up-front market cost
• You pay for it as you use the product
• You can develop a product on your own premises
• Just give the key to the vendor, so that there are no separate deployment costs.
• You save on travel and meals, as well as housing required for a development team required for deployment and implementation.
• The distance between the client and development team is invisible.
• You may arrange virtual-real trainings/demos based on the affordability of the client’s budget.
• There is no requirement of special hardware, as costs and additional software are bared by the cloud platform. You can spend as you need based on what the client’s needs are and scale hardware and software up to the client’s needs.
• Cost of the platform and the software upgrades are covered under the service contract.

We developed our product with a small team of .NET developers for a client, a law university in Delhi, India.

We received the requirements from conversations of our team with our client, over the phone, and with email.

There was minimal training required for the team to be trained in cloud, as every developer in the team had basic .NET skills.

This product was then intended to be used by law university students for their training in court room sessions as student lawyers debating against each other to deduce lawful judgements of a case under study.

We provided virtual chat rooms for the students and had facilitated a method to share video sessions of their debates in virtual court rooms.

Microsoft has delivered on its promise by providing a free, developer-student (community) edition of Visual Studio.

I have used this for around 6-9 months to develop and implement the product.

There are questions in the developers’ and clients’ minds:

• Since Azure is a pay-by-use product, what is the provision for the future?
• If, for some reason, we lost this provision, what fallback parachute is Microsoft planning for customers?
• What risk planning and hedging should the client do? There is no such possibility, but the concern must be addressed by Microsoft.

Physically owned products are also subject to failure. The hardware on premise also fails and needs to be maintained, so there is expected downtime.

Microsoft provides mirroring of cloud servers. There is a sure provision of backup and restore of the cloud environment.

By centralizing these services and products at a central location (datacenter), we are optimizing on services and goods cost and sharing these costs with other cloud dwellers.

By going towards the cloud, we are going towards a virus and spyware free environment.

We are moving away from special, owned hardware and products, to cloud-based datacenters, which exist in the other resource rich, low cost, areas.

This is Platform as a Service of the SOA revolution.

Along with overseas datacenters, we shall promote near shore or local datacenters to capitalize on the cloud advantage. We will also address issues of risk hedging, which will spur job growth in local areas.

We didn’t have any scalability problems.

We did not explore this option, but the response was good for whatever we did request.

We switched due to the advantages I mentioned earlier.

You don’t have to install the product on the cloud platform. You receive a login with pre-pared software installs. Custom requirements need to be implemented or requested.

Every region of a country has cheaper locations that can provide cost advantages, and data center growth must be equally distributed on earth with electricity and resource rich, low cost, areas to keep the cost of the cloud minimal. This will also avert natural and man-made calamities.

The United States and other countries can take this cloud option to the next level of off-shoring without any immigration and terrorism issues, enabling development in impoverished areas of the world.

This can further cut down the cost of software development, other "down-the-line" products, services and goods, and will empower the poor and neglected of the world.

This will also improve trade between the countries. There are always imbalances amongst populations in any country in skills and monetary status. An equalizer could be achieved by allowing more trade, more freedom, and more pollination.

In India, we had to start development using the 3-month free subscription Azure platform .net and SQL . Now as far as I know, vs 2015 community edition is a free download. One can develop software application in it and deploy it with an Azure subscription which is pay as you use. All nitty-gritty development can be done by a development team. That's why Microsoft has delivered their dream cloud promise with the zero cost alternative of community edition.

We considered local cloud and physical install options. These options were expensive and less effective.

Microsoft Cloud is reliable and dependable.

The solution is used to manage our databases in the cloud.

The hardware is all managed by Microsoft.

The pricing plans when using multiple Microsoft solutions are complex and have room for improvement.

I am currently using the solution.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable.

The technical support is good.

The initial setup depends on the requirements but is easier than the on-prem SQL.

I have seen a return on investment.

The pricing is flexible and can be adapted based on our requirements but the pricing options are complex especially if we are using a VM.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

Maintenance is minimal and can easily be done.

I suggest researching the solution on Microsoft.com where there is a good learning platform before using the solution.

We usually work on a valuation basis. When a customer wants to get on to our cloud, we suggest SQL Azure to them.

The preset configuration switches we can select on SQL Azure should be made more liberal to work on. The licensing cost for the solution is very expensive and should be improved.

I have been using SQL Azure for eight years.

SQL Azure is a stable solution.

SQL Azure is a scalable solution. Around 30 to 40 customers are using the solution.

Their customer support is not ok at all because sometimes the tickets we raise don't get authorized.

The initial setup for the solution is easy. It takes around 10 to 15 minutes to set up the solution. The deployment of the solution is straightforward.

The ROI depends on the customer and the scenario.

SQL Azure's licensing cost is expensive.

SQL Azure is a cloud-based solution. We usually require one or two people to deploy and maintain the solution. I would recommend SQL Azure for other people who don’t want to manage their environment. The worst thing about Microsoft is that it has a very bad license agreement that nobody understands.

Overall, I rate SQL Azure an eight out of ten.

Our core business is to make mathematical models for production and solutions. We don't develop or use software. The data comes with the Excel format stored in SQL and we write complex queries about the data and run it in our models. Our data is not sensitive and it's a matter of having a server for storage. I'm a software engineer.

SQL Azure is efficient and very easy to use. The programming facility is very good and the solution is great at solving problems. 

SQL Azure could offer a lot more services and applications. I'd also like to see some tools that we could use on the SQL Server for data virtualization. That would be an improvement. 

I've been using this solution for 10 years. 

We don't run critical data and haven't had any issues with the stability. 

We have a lot of experience and good programmers and IT administrators in the company, so we haven't needed customer support. 

Our implementation was straightforward and carried out internally. We have 10 users of this solution, the majority are in production and engineering, with a couple in software engineering. 

Our license is pay-as-you-go and we pay around €200 per month. You need to keep an eye on this because with scaling the cost can increase quite quickly. 

This solution is more expensive than some others, but not as expensive as Amazon, Google and Oracle, which all have a lot of extra costs involved. 

I recommend this solution and rate it 10 out of 10.