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Introduction
Azure SQL Database Managed Instance is a flavor of Azure SQL Database that represents a fully managed SQL Server Database Engine Instance hosted in Azure cloud. In this article, we are going to learn about its features along with its pricing details.
Azure SQL Managed Instance
Azure SQL Managed Instance is a scalable cloud data service designed to provide near-perfect compatibility with the broadest SQL Server database engine, which has all the benefits of a fully managed platform. Depending on your scenario, Azure SQL Managed Instance might offer more options for your database needs. These instances enable you to deploy a native virtual network (VNet) that mimics on-premises deployments and increases security.
Azure SQL Managed Instance is a platform as a service (PaaS) database engine like the Azure SQL Database. It means that we can move your company’s data to the cloud in a fully managed environment. Our company will also benefit from the quick provisioning and service scaling features of Azure, along with automated patching and version upgrades.
There are many features that make managed instances for SQL database deployment different from single or elastic pool deployments. Some of the important key features are:
Linked Servers
Linked Servers enable us to execute commands by reading data from remote sources. It also enables us to operate a distributed database. This feature allows us to configure many API data sources as linked servers, including Microsoft Access, Azure CosmosDB, and Excel. We can also use linked servers to implement sharding without using custom application code or direct loading.
Service Broker
Service brokers provide native support for messaging and queuing. We can use it to build distributed applications and enable communication between separate databases.
When we use Service Broker, we can easily distribute workloads across databases. Service Broker is a feature that manages the communication paths for us, enabling us to focus on development and testing with the data consistency.
Database Mail
Database Mail is a feature that enables us to send e-mail messages from our Azure SQL-managed instance. With it, we can notify users of completed processes, send query results and attach files from any other in-network resource.
Azure SQL Managed Instance Pricing
When we are using Azure SQL Database Managed Instance, we can choose from two service tiers:
General-purpose: It is designed for non-mission critical applications with standard IO latency and performance requirements. With this tier, we gain access to 8TB of high-performance Azure Blob storage and built-in availability ensured with Azure Service Fabric.
Business-critical: It is designed for mission-critical applications that require low latency and that have a low tolerance for performance impacts created by maintenance. With this tier, we gain access to a read-only replica, up to 4TB of local SSD storage, high availability via Always On Availability groups and Azure Service Fabric, and In-Memory OLTP.
To know about the latest prices and additional pricing options, visit the official pricing page.
Migration
Azure SQL Managed Instance makes it easy to migrate our on-premises data on SQL Server to the cloud using the Azure Database Migration Service (DMS) or native backup and restore. After we've discovered all of your company's features, we need to assess which on-premises SQL Server instances we can migrate to Azure SQL Managed Instance to see if we have any blocking issues. Once we've resolved any problems, we can migrate our data, then cut over from our on-premises SQL Server to our Azure SQL Managed Instance by changing the connection string in our applications.
Microsoft Azure, formerly known as Windows Azure, is Microsoft's public cloud computing platform. It provides a wide range of cloud services, including computing, analytics, storage, and networking.
What is the difference between cloud and Azure?
Microsoft Azure services and Google cloud both offer virtual machines (VMs). Microsoft calls them Azure virtual machines, while Google calls them Compute Engines. Azure offers boot-disk-only and full machine VMs where the cloud is boot-disk-only. Both have autoscaling included.
Why use AWS vs. Azure?
Azure is open to Hybrid cloud systems, whereas AWS is less open to private or third-party cloud providers. AWS follows pay-as-we-go, and they charge per hour, whereas Azure also follows the pay-as-we-go model, but they charge per minute, which provides a more exact pricing model than AWS.
Conclusion
In this article, we have discussed the Azure SQL Managed Instance. We discussed some features of it and discussed its pricing tiers. We also discussed Migration in Azure SQL Managed Instance.