Microsoft Azure SQL Database Reviews

What I like the most is the processes and the easiness of deployments.

What I don't like is the personalization of an instance is difficult to deploy. Sometimes it's hard if you want to make a cluster of SQLs on Azure; it's not a good approach, but sometimes it worked out for me.

If I have to do something very specific to the instance, sometimes I am not allowed to leave those types of configurations because they need it to be broader. They are not at the level that I need to make the configurations that I want.

The configuration is the only area to be improved. Everything else is what it is and what we expected. The configuration is the area that is most cumbersome.

I have been using SQL Azure for two years.

I have the latest version. I always update to the latest version.

It's a very stable solution.

SQL Azure is perfectly scalable.

We have a team of 20 to 25 developers who are using this solution for development. 

Also, we have thousands of clients for the databases that are using it.

Technical support is fast, it's reliable, and they are knowledgeable.

If your problem is in the knowledge base then support is very good. If it's not in the knowledge base, then it's central and not on the Microsoft roadmap.

The initial setup is more complex than it is straightforward.

The easiest deployment requires an hour. If you have a one-by-one project that consists of migration and replication, it can take several weeks.

Using SQL Azure really depends on the settings that you want to deploy, or the amount of money that you want to spend. If you are deploying and thinking that something will grow so that you can align your income to pay per use, then it's pretty good. 

If you are considering something where your payments or your income is not related to pay-per-use, you may consider using it on-premises during the beginning. It really depends on your settings.

Overall, this solution is pretty good.

There are still some areas that have to develop, but I would rate SQL Azure an eight out of ten.

We like the ease of integrating it with our on-premises environment. We use a hybrid model. We have a SQL Server on-premises, and we have an integration with the cloud version. We do CPU or disk intensive processes on-premises. For accessibility, we offload onto the cloud. When you do a lot of IO and things like that in the cloud, Microsoft charges for the CPU activity.

Price definitely may be a negative point. As for most of cloud based solution, certain cost components as CPU and IO usage may cause extremely hi costs.

It has been a bit over a year.

It is stable.

It is scalable. In fact, it is too easy to scale. It just scales and sends you the invoice. You have to tune it to lock it down, and then it doesn't go too far. These are the kind of things you have to take care of to avoid having bad surprises at the end of the month when they send you the resource usage invoice.

I didn't contact them regarding SQL Server, but I have contacted them for Azure and Office 365 support. They are usually quite good.

It is too easy. Initially, the database engine itself takes an hour, and that's it. Tuning it is another matter, but tuning is anyways a difficult task in itself.

It is quite expensive. I would definitely recommend not using the pay-as-you-go model because this will just mean all your money will go to Microsoft. So, really make sure to control resource usage as much as possible.

I would definitely recommend this solution. It is a very good product, and it is difficult to beat. I haven't got anything that I saw missing in it in terms of features. It is always integrated within Azure and Microsoft Office 365 ecosystems. If there is something that the database can't do, it is quite easy to have another path of the offering to take over. They are almost like AWS. They have so many services that it is really difficult not to be able to achieve things. There is always something or someone. It is just a matter of price. You also have access to the service, documentation, and even the user community.

I would rate SQL Azure an eight out of ten.

We use it for a few databases that are deployed for our own purposes. 

SQL is a simpler database. We use it more than other databases. 

I have been using SQL Azure for three to four months. 

We haven't had any issues with performance. 

There are only three users who use it. Once we are more comfortable we will give it to more users. My technology team uses it. 

Microsoft technical support is good. 

Pricing is reasonable for a big enterprise. The price is a little higher. It should have a 20% discount. 

I would rate SQL Azure an eight out of ten. 

We are using it for an application in two different models, the PaaS model and the SaaS model. One is the product, so we are using it as a SaaS model. We are using the other one simply as a PaaS model.

For its deployment, we are sort of using the highest model in which one instance has only VM and the SQL installer on it. Another instance is simply using SQL Azure.

We primarily and generally use it only for DB purposes. When it comes to the Azure part, we can easily provision, scale up, and scale down the generator machine. This kind of flexibility is the USP of SQL Azure.

Its interface and ease of use are also valuable. It is very easy to use and integrate with multiple databases. If I need to pull in or import some data from my on-premises database, the ease with which you can connect and pull the data, not only from SQL Server but also from other flavors of MySQL or even Oracle, is very good. 

The way it has been designed, in the on-premises deployments, the underlying Windows OS is highly scalable but has a very large resource requirement. A lot of power-related and memory-related things are there, which I have not seen in the RHEL and Oracle. I have not tried SQL on RHEL EXEC. On Windows, infrastructure-wise, a very large workload is running on the SQL. This issue is related to Windows, not SQL.

I have been using SQL Azure for two years. 

As of now, we have less production workload on Azure, but whatever is there, it is pretty stable. So, from a very large workload perspective, I can't comment, but till now, I have not found any issue. I will consider it quite stable as of now.

It is highly scalable.

My team initiates the service request. We have unified support from Microsoft. The service request is through the service hub. This is, in fact, a very good change from the point of view of the overall approach towards support. We can open multiple or unlimited numbers of service requests on the service hub, and their response is also quite good.

We started with just a simple client-server kind of application. Right now, we are basically in the full-phased data lake solution of Azure. So, it is in the design and architecture stages. When it is finalized, then we will implement a full-blown solution on Azure.

I would, of course, highly recommend this solution. You cannot avoid SQL Server or SQL Azure if you are primarily working in the database domain. There are a lot of other databases available in the market, but the ease with which you can do the development and the overall support that you get cannot be compared with any other database. 

I would rate SQL Azure a nine out of ten.

I use SQL Azure strictly for active data rescue.

All of my work is stored in the Microsoft Azure Cloud.

I am working on a special product with another person — it's a secret product, so, unfortunately, I can't talk about it.

I am very happy with this solution; right now, I don't think there is anything I would change.

More power should be included between the upgrades. We started with a less costly service but we needed more power. We paid a lot and upgraded but we still needed more power. The power should increase more between each upgrade.

I have been using SQL Azure for three years.

SQL Azure is both very stable and scalable.

I have never had to contact customer support. There are several educational sites that I pay for that supply me with help.

The initial setup was very straightforward. It's online, so I didn't need to install anything. I just had to choose options and activate them. 

How much we pay is determined by how much we upgrade or downgrade our services. If you downgrade the service you pay less if you upgrade the services you pay more.

Microsoft has a cheap license for developers. Still, it was expensive for us because we are not a company, and we don't use crowdfunding, we used our own money to pay for the license.

I would recommend SQL Azure to others.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of ten.

Right now, with Azure, we have everything we need. The only problem we have with Azure is regarding the price.

We are using it for a database.

Their technical support is the most valuable.

There is so much information that it becomes confusing at times. The information can be more friendly. They could also provide additional training, especially at the beginning.

I have been using SQL Azure for the last two years.

It is pretty stable.

It is indeed scalable. We have around five people using it, and we plan to scale it.

Their technical support is good.

It is reasonable.

I would recommend SQL Azure. It is a good platform to use, and it has a lot of information, whatever you want. 

I would rate SQL Azure an eight out of ten.

As consultants, we deploy this solution to our customers both on cloud and on-prem. Most of our clients buy the solution as an application package which requires a database. If they are a "Microsoft shop," I recommend they use SQL Server. I'm the development manager and we are customers of Azure.

I like the reliability of SQL Server and the solution has become easier to use over time, and I believe it will become more popular in the future. It's also reasonably priced. As a competitor, Oracle may have 10% of the features that SQL Server cannot offer but those features are for high-end database and high-end applications. Most clients don't need those extras and shouldn't have to pay for high-end features like the redundancy.

SQL has become more versatile because of features they continue to add. Every new version has new features and it pretty much covers everything in terms of memory, database, the caching, the redundancy, and high availability. I would say MS SQL server fully meets the requirement of 95% of my clients out there.

If you use the solution in the Microsoft environment, it's fine. But if you're using Java then it seems to be out of place. AWS has a new product called Aurora, it's a new database that can deal with both types of workloads: transactional and analytical. That's a big challenge for all the other databases including SQL, because most of the databases out there are designed for either type of workload but the Amazon AWS Aurora does both. With SQL, if they do the BI normally, you then have to replicate the production database to another database which is no longer necessary with Aurora. It's something SQL could include. 

I've been using this solution for several years. 

This is a stable solution. 

I think they still have issues with scalability. For applications requiring scalability, I'd recommend using the database on the cloud and not on-premises. We have up to 200 users for this solution, mainly office workers and generally working in small to medium sized companies. 

Microsoft doesn't provide technical support, the support structure is not good. If you need something, you have to call them and the cost is $499 per incident ticket which is very expensive. The good thing about the SQL Server is that there is a lot of information out there in the community.

I also used Oracle and I think it's a good solution for companies that already use Oracle. It makes sense for them to go with that solution as the database for their application. For a company that has no attachment, I recommend SQL.

The initial setup was quite straightforward.

If our clients are non-Microsoft clients and they have the money, then I recommend Oracle. But for ease of use, scalability, and value for money, I like SQL.

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

It is a transactional system. We use it to visualize financial transactions, such as cash in, cash out, in real time.

It is very fast in replicating the data from one database to another. We do some extractions from multiple databases to a target database that we use for visualization. It has a good speed.

It is a little bit expensive for us. They can improve the price. It would also be very helpful if they can offer some free trial.

I have been using this solution for around three years.

It is stable.

It is very scalable. Around 14 developers in our company use it. They are responsible for business intelligence and databases. 

I never contacted them.

I have used MySQL.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was not a big deal. It took a few minutes for features like .NET.

I installed it on my own. 

It is expensive for us. We are looking for something less expensive and thinking of migrating the whole system.

I would rate SQL Azure a seven out of ten. In terms of experience, it is a very good product, but it is a little bit expensive.