Azure SQL Database
Azure SQL Database is a fully managed platform as a service (PaaS) database engine that handles most of the database management functions such as upgrading, patching, backups, and monitoring without user involvement.
Key Features
- Fully Managed: No OS or software patching required.
- High Availability: Built-in HA with 99.99% SLA.
- Intelligence: Automatic tuning, performance monitoring, and threat detection.
- Serverless: Auto-scaling compute based on workload demand.
Use Cases
- Modern Cloud Apps: Build new applications with a managed relational database.
- SaaS Applications: Multi-tenant applications using elastic pools.
- Migration: Migrate existing SQL Server workloads to the cloud with minimal changes.
Key Concepts
- DTU vs. vCore: Two purchasing models. DTU is a bundled measure of compute/storage. vCore allows independent scaling.
- Elastic Pools: Share resources across multiple databases to optimize costs.
- Geo-Replication: Replicate data to secondary regions for disaster recovery.