Microsoft Azure HorizonDB Reviews

I am using Microsoft Azure HorizonDB mostly for my current project as storage for most of the client data where I store the data from the front end, whatever I receive, by applying many ETL processes including extraction, transformation, and load from various sources. I then load that data into Microsoft Azure HorizonDB and use the data object models for more analytical purposes to gain insight on user data. I am also trying to apply artificial intelligence to get the most insightful user trends, specifically what users are currently doing with the product and how they are using it.

I appreciate the features that Microsoft Azure HorizonDB provides, particularly the seamless transformation of the database, data collection, and database access along with the analytics features. The ease of storing or retrieving data through the API and the convenient way to develop APIs for accessing data are what I find most valuable.

The initial deployment of Microsoft Azure HorizonDB was very easy because all the information was provided in the documentation. I found the ease of getting started with the database to be excellent, so that has not been a problem for me.

One area I can identify for improvement is query performance during peak traffic situations. I encountered this issue once when there was peak traffic or when people were trying to access one part of the data frequently. I noticed that the performance when querying the database and receiving responses was delayed compared to normal user flow. The dataset and concurrent traffic flow for certain queries become expensive and increase latency. This is an area where Microsoft Azure HorizonDB could improve to address why this occurs.

I have been using Microsoft Azure HorizonDB for more than one and a half years in my career since I was introduced to it in my last project.

Microsoft Azure HorizonDB is very stable, which is why we are using it in our product. The fact that it is a Microsoft product means stability is not an issue on a large scale. It is very stable overall, though stability does depend on the type of project and requirements involved. For our project requirements, it is very stable and provides good performance.

Microsoft Azure HorizonDB scales perfectly. It automatically scales whenever there is a load on the application. I have configured the deployment files on my projects, and the database is able to handle automatic scaling by itself, so I do not have to put much attention on that aspect. It scales down automatically as well. I monitored the scaling and scaling out one or two times during the initial stage when I was first including this database in my project. After the first and second times, I checked only the logs for automatic scaling and scaling out. I have not encountered any issue on the scaling side, and it provides consistent performance for both scaling and scaling out.

Currently, I do not have any requirement to contact the technical support from the Azure team because most of the issues were published on the community forum with very clear and crisp solutions mentioned there. With AI tools available now, I am able to solve most issues independently. Although I have not had to call the support team, I am confident that the support team is very active based on my previous experience. In a previous project, I had Microsoft Azure configured for identity management, and when I had an issue with configuring a tenant, the support team provided very good assistance.

The initial deployment of Microsoft Azure HorizonDB was very easy because all the information was provided in the documentation. I found the ease of getting started with the database to be excellent, so that has not been a problem for me.

The pricing is somewhat competitive compared to other vendors, but it is fair enough. I would not consider it the most expensive or the cheapest option, but the pricing strikes a balance that seems very reasonable.

For the maintenance of Microsoft Azure HorizonDB, I sometimes need to pay specific attention to the database connection. I occasionally need to check if the database is up to date and verify connectivity. Most of the time it is 99.9 percent accurate, but sometimes I do not know why, perhaps because of a server-side issue on my end or potentially on their end. Rarely, about one out of 100 times, I need to pay specific attention to the configuration of the data and check the connection. However, Microsoft Azure HorizonDB provides the most accurate logging feature, which makes it easy for me to identify the exact issue.

The documentation for Microsoft Azure HorizonDB is very accurate, with everything provided step by step. For any newcomer or new user, I do not believe they would encounter any issue integrating the database. Technical problems related to installation and configuration are accurately covered in the documentation. In cases where a user might encounter difficulties with technical issues while using the database, the community addresses these concerns. There are many questions and answers for public queries mentioned in the community forums. The documentation is excellent.

I would rate this product a nine out of ten.

Microsoft Azure

I use Microsoft Azure HorizonDB for groups where transactional workloads are high, for PostgreSQL applications. For example, I need to scale compute and storage as and when the demand changes, and that's where I use Horizon database.

Microsoft Azure HorizonDB's machine learning capabilities assist my organization's data analytics efforts because it helps with PostgreSQL extensions such as PGVector that are useful for retrieval-based AI applications. In my rack-based applications, ML models require very fast and relevant access to data, and that's where it helps.

I decided to go with Microsoft Azure HorizonDB because it's new and, as an AI-native company, we always want to try new things. I expected some ROI and efficiency improvement, so I decided to adopt it because I wanted a scalable and high-performance database that supports my AI use cases.

I value Microsoft Azure HorizonDB because it provides strong PostgreSQL compatibility, and that too with scalable compute and storage. Whenever any workload scales or whenever the traffic increases, it doesn't require manual management of the underlying database infrastructure.

Microsoft Azure HorizonDB's tools for automated backups are excellent because I don't have any constraints, and I can keep secure database backups that are always available.

Microsoft Azure HorizonDB's versatile data models help in fulfilling my applications' diverse requirements by providing PostgreSQL data models that support structured data. I use tables, rows, and columns for SQL, which makes it suitable for my AI use cases such as semantic searches based on those requirements.

Microsoft Azure HorizonDB's monitoring features have improved database performance significantly since I don't have to do it manually.

The initial setup process for Microsoft Azure HorizonDB was very straightforward because it was through the Azure environment. I created database clusters and then configured it, taking two to three days for production setup testing, which is doable for anyone.

I think Microsoft Azure HorizonDB can improve by maturing its features, especially since the product is pretty new right now. More AI/ML tooling and integrations will make adoption easier, and those features would significantly help.

While the functionality of Microsoft Azure HorizonDB is good, I would like to see more third-party integrations in the future, as it is relatively new compared to others. With time, it will gain more production maturity and instill more confidence in users, but right now, improvements in AI/ML tooling and integration are what I feel are necessary.

I have been working with Microsoft Azure HorizonDB for four months now, and this is something new for my organization.

Microsoft Azure HorizonDB helps to streamline my workflows because it has favorable compatibilities to keep applications available as and when required. My downtime is very minimal, allowing my workflows to work effectively without much interruption.

Using Microsoft Azure HorizonDB provides better scalability and performance in terms of database administration. Instead of manually provisioning additional databases to infrastructures whenever workload increases, I can scale the database environment based on application requirements with the help of Horizon database environment.

It basically reduces the infrastructure management overhead, and also helps in scaling the storage and compute independently, so I don't have to manually do it. This feature matches well with my workload requirements.

Through my Azure ecosystem prior to adopting Microsoft Azure HorizonDB, I basically had data privacy and security controls.

The initial setup process for Microsoft Azure HorizonDB was very straightforward because it was through the Azure environment. I created database clusters and then configured it, taking two to three days for production setup testing, which is doable for anyone.

So far, I have not seen any return on investment from Microsoft Azure HorizonDB in terms of cost. However, I realize that it can improve, and I have sensed that it reduces infrastructure management time, allowing for quick storage scaling as per requirements, which I consider the major ROI, although it hasn't been properly measured yet.

I don't have any idea about the pricing aspect of Microsoft Azure HorizonDB, but I have heard in meetings that it's relatively costly.

My advice for other organizations considering Microsoft Azure HorizonDB is that anyone who wants to try it should first test it in a controlled workload before moving everything to Horizon. It's important to focus on data modeling before going live and to evaluate the performance properly before planning full implementation, especially for those needing a new solution with ML workloads. I would rate this product an eight out of ten.

Public Cloud

Microsoft Azure

My main use case for Microsoft Azure HorizonDB is that we were experiencing performance issues in Azure PostgreSQL flexible server, so we wanted to eliminate those issues and started using Microsoft Azure HorizonDB. A specific example of how I used Microsoft Azure HorizonDB to address those performance issues is that we were experiencing disk IO errors in Azure PostgreSQL. Microsoft Azure HorizonDB has a separate storage layer, so when we started using it, we did not encounter those disk IO errors. Regarding my main use case and how it has helped with those disk IO issues, we did not perform any special configuration in Microsoft Azure HorizonDB. The underlying architecture itself has a separate storage layer, whereas Azure PostgreSQL shares CPU, memory, and storage layers together. We believe this different architecture may have helped resolve the performance issues. Because our application is very disk IO intensive with heavy read and write operations, this is one of our critical databases.

The best features Microsoft Azure HorizonDB offers is a separate storage layer, which I feel is the best feature. We also have noticed a few security improvements compared to Azure Database for PostgreSQL. The security improvements I noticed in Microsoft Azure HorizonDB compared to Azure Database for PostgreSQL stand out to me. When integrating it with our Azure Entra, we faced difficulties with Azure Database for PostgreSQL, but in Microsoft Azure HorizonDB, the setup was very simple for configuring the integration with our Entra. We also have centralized access control alongside the rest of our Azure identity estate, which we do not have with PostgreSQL. Microsoft Azure HorizonDB has impacted my organization positively, although it is not in full-fledged usage yet. We just started what we can say is a proof of concept setup and it is not in actual live usage yet. Since we are in the proof of concept phase, we have noticed some early improvements and potential benefits that stand out so far in terms of speed, reliability, and ease of management. The performance is very much improved. The security posture including Entra ID, private endpoint, encryption, and zone replication also shows some improvement compared to our existing Azure PostgreSQL flexible servers.

Improvements for Microsoft Azure HorizonDB mean that we still have not gotten actual usage of real issues. We just started the proof of concept phase, so we might discover what the exact real issues are once we get full-fledged usage at the ground level. Regarding needed improvements, I feel that we need more documentation on Microsoft Azure HorizonDB. The documentation is less comprehensive when compared to existing Azure managed SQL instances, PostgreSQL, and MySQL. We still require more documentation on Microsoft Azure HorizonDB. We also do not have detailed architecture diagrams the way we have for managed instance, PostgreSQL, and MySQL. The documentation needs to be improved.

I have been using Microsoft Azure HorizonDB for three months.

Microsoft Azure HorizonDB is stable.

Microsoft Azure HorizonDB's scalability is good. One more feature improvement I observed compared to our Azure PostgreSQL PaaS instance is scalability, which is good in Microsoft Azure HorizonDB.

We have Azure overall support for customer support.

Previously, we were using AWS Aurora PostgreSQL, which we feel is a little bit pricier compared to Microsoft Azure HorizonDB. All our applications and setup are mostly Microsoft user-friendly applications, so that is why we started using Microsoft Azure HorizonDB.

When integrating Microsoft Azure HorizonDB with our Azure Entra, we did not face difficulties. The setup was very simple for configuring the integration with our Entra. We also have centralized access control alongside the rest of our Azure identity estate.

I have not seen a return on investment yet, as we have still not finalized or determined what the final ROI will be.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Microsoft Azure HorizonDB is that the pricing is good.

Before choosing Microsoft Azure HorizonDB, we evaluated AWS Aurora PostgreSQL.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Microsoft Azure HorizonDB overall as nine out of ten. I chose nine out of ten because of the documentation and the real use cases that I still have not seen published by Microsoft. Regarding Microsoft Azure HorizonDB's AI capabilities, I still have not covered the governance and security aspects, including what guardrails or security mitigations we need to have in place for Microsoft Azure HorizonDB. I think the security enhancements that we are doing for PostgreSQL, MySQL, and managed SQL instances will apply here, but I still have not gone into detail about any specific security requirements we need to implement for Microsoft Azure HorizonDB. Regarding Microsoft Azure HorizonDB's AI capabilities, I feel that its accuracy and reliability of output is good. I feel that Microsoft Azure HorizonDB intelligence might resolve performance issues or in-built capabilities such as re-indexing and database object tuning. I feel that it has good AI capability compared to our other Azure PaaS instances. There are no other improvements needed for Microsoft Azure HorizonDB that I have not mentioned yet. Something small that I hope to see in the future would be the documentation and real use cases. My advice to others looking into using Microsoft Azure HorizonDB is that instead of going with open source, I recommend using Microsoft Azure HorizonDB. I do not have any additional thoughts about Microsoft Azure HorizonDB before we wrap up, as I feel I have already provided all the inputs I have.

Microsoft Azure HorizonDB serves as my main use case because it is fundamentally a PostgreSQL database, and our company manages financial data with this type of database. It functions as an OLTP system, and with workflows involving massive data, we manage it using Microsoft Azure HorizonDB.

A specific example of how I use Microsoft Azure HorizonDB with our financial data is that it contains multiple datasets and is a huge database. It operates as an OLTP, and when multiple users connect simultaneously, we found that it manages the transaction volume very easily and very smoothly. The application users are not facing any deadlock or locks in this scenario, and it is also used for real-time analytics very smoothly. It has outstanding performance compared to other relational databases, which is why we are using it. Microsoft Azure HorizonDB is better than other relational databases.

The best features of Microsoft Azure HorizonDB that I find valuable are its tremendous performance tuning benefits. First, it eliminates the checkpoint bottlenecks. Traditional PG Flex databases write dirty data pages from memory to disk, causing massive IOPS bottlenecks, but Microsoft Azure HorizonDB has different mechanisms. It streams only the WAL to the storage nodes where the page state is reconstructed asynchronously, which reduces the consistency and the commit latency is very low.

From the backup perspective, one of the features of Microsoft Azure HorizonDB that I would highlight is its zero impact snapshot backups, which I believe are better than the Azure PG Flex database. It relies on instantaneous storage blob snapshots, which is excellent, and continuous WAL archiving. I believe the recovery point is also better compared to PG Flex, which is where it excels.

Microsoft Azure HorizonDB has positively impacted my organization by reducing latency issues, improving performance, and providing a good recovery time. These are the things that are very beneficial for my organization.

I think one excellent feature that would improve Microsoft Azure HorizonDB is similar to what Oracle has, the restore point, such as time travel. I believe that time travel using a restore point is not possible here, and that is one feature I think is missing.

I have been using Microsoft Azure HorizonDB for more than one year; specifically, 15 months.

My advice for others looking into using Microsoft Azure HorizonDB is to proceed if you want to pay more and if you want to stabilize your environment and use the AI-related features. I want to say that the costing of Microsoft Azure HorizonDB is too high and should be less. I would rate this product a 7 out of 10.