Azure SQL Database Managed Instance

Editor's Notes

• #4: The answer is to consider a PaaS (Platform as a Service) solution like Azure SQL Database. Azure SQL Database is a fully-managed relational database-as-a service that provides the best and most economical cloud destination for your SQL Server data. SQL Database uses the Microsoft SQL Server Engine, which means it’s high-performance, reliable, and secure. You can use it to build data-driven applications and websites in the programming language of your choice, without needing to manage infrastructure. As a PaaS offering, Microsoft operates SQL Server for you and ensures availability and performance. PaaS features that come with SQL Database include, but are not limited to: provisioning and resizing (w/ Azure Portal experience), built-in auto HA (99.99%), automatic backup, point-in-time-restore (database-level), and active geo-replication. Because Microsoft assumes much of the daily maintenance, administration and infrastructure costs, your IT organization can quickly realize cost and operational benefits that you may not have otherwise experienced with your on-premises or hosted solution. In fact, a study by IDC found that organizations who modernized their databases from SQL Server to SQL Database realized up to a 406% ROI over five years.1 In addition to the benefits of PaaS, SQL Database also provides key benefits in some specific areas: It has built-in intelligence that helps you dramatically reduce the costs of running and managing databases and maximizes both the performance and security of your application. SQL Database provides breakthrough productivity and performance to meet the demands of today’s apps. Each database is isolated from each other and portable, each with its own service tier with a guaranteed performance level. SQL Database provides different performance levels for different needs, and enables databases to be pooled to maximize the use of resources and save money. You can adjust performance with minimal downtime to your app. Dynamic scalability enables your database to transparently respond to rapidly changing resource requirements and enables you to only pay for the resources that you need when you need them. In-memory technologies provide real-time business insight with up to 30x improved throughput and latency and up to 100x faster queries and reports. It will provide the ability to seamlessly lift and shift your SQL Server data to the cloud to a managed instance with a full SQL Server programming surface area that removes the need to re-architect your apps, saving you time and resources. SQL Database combines the operational and financial benefits of Azure PaaS with a financially-backed SLA and business continuity tools to protect the lifeblood of your business, your data. SQL Database will soon offer a Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server that maximizes the investments you’ve made in on-premises licensing by providing discounted rates in the cloud. 1The Business Value of Microsoft Azure SQL Database Services, IDC, March 2015
• #5: Azure SQL Database, a fully-managed relational database service, delivers predictable performance at multiple service levels that provide dynamic scalability with minimal or no downtime, built-in intelligent optimization, global scalability and availability, and advanced security options — all with near-zero administration. These capabilities allow you to focus on rapid app development and accelerating your time to market, rather than allocating precious time and resources to managing virtual machines and infrastructure.
• #6: 5
• #10: With digital transformation in mind, let’s focus on how SQL Database provides the low-cost, low-friction option to migrating your SQL Server data at scale to SQL Database – without having to re-architect your apps. Introducing Azure SQL Database Managed Instance SQL Database Managed Instance is an expansion of the existing SQL Database service designed to enable database lift-and-shift to a fully-managed PaaS, without re-designing the application. SQL Database Managed Instance provides high compatibility with the on-premises SQL Server programming model and out-of-box support for the large majority of SQL Server features and accompanying tools and services. It’s important to note that Managed Instance isn’t a new service – it is a third deployment option within Azure SQL Database, sitting alongside single databases and elastic pools. As part of Azure SQL Database, Microsoft’s fully managed cloud database service, it inherits all its built-in PaaS features.
• #20: SQL Database Managed Instance provides complete workload isolation of your workloads through native VNET support. We use virtual data clusters to describe the degree of isolation that customer workloads will experience with SQL Database Managed Instance. During service provisioning (on Azure Portal or through REST API), you can choose the virtual network (VNET) and the subnet to achieve full networking isolation for your Managed Instances. Once created, instances in the VNET can be reached using Azure networking mechanisms (VPN and Express Route gateways). To two levels of isolation are provided: Cluster (tenant ring) level: Managed Instances for a tenant are fully isolated from other tenants. No connectivity or resource sharing is possible between different tenants. Networking level: joining instances to a subnet in a VNET and restricting access to private IP addresses only provides full isolation from public Internet.
• #25: SQL Database Managed Instance will provide two licensing options: purchase a new license or use your existing on-premises licenses through Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server. The Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server helps customers maximize the value from their current licensing investments and accelerate their migration to the cloud. Azure Hybrid Use Benefit for SQL Server is an Azure-based benefit that enables customers to use their SQL Server licenses with Software Assurance to pay a reduced rate (“base rate”) on SQL Database Managed Instance. Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server will be available at public preview (Q4 CY 2017).
• #29: Objective: In Microsoft Azure SQL Database, when you sign up for the service, the provisioning process creates an Azure SQL Database server, a database named master, and a login that is the server-level principal of your Azure SQL Database server. That login is similar to the server-level principal, sa, for an instance of SQL Server on your premises.  Talking Points: The Azure SQL Database server-level principal account always has permission to manage all server-level and database-level security. This topic describes how you can use the server-level principal and other accounts to manage logins and databases in Microsoft Azure SQL Database. Security administration in Microsoft Azure SQL Database is similar to security administration for an on-premises instance of SQL Server. Managing security at the database-level is almost identical, with differences only in the parameters available. Because Azure SQL Databases can scale to one or more physical computers, Microsoft Azure SQL Database uses a different strategy for server-level administration. The following table summarizes how security administration for an on-premises SQL Server is different than in Microsoft Azure SQL Database. The loginmanager Role Like the securityadmin fixed server role for an on-premises instance of SQL Server, the loginmanager database role in Microsoft Azure SQL Database is has permission to create logins. Only the server-level principal login (created by the provisioning process) or members of the loginmanager database role can create new logins. The dbmanager Role The Microsoft Azure SQL Database dbmanager database role is similar to the dbcreator fixed server role for an on-premise instance of SQL Server. Only the server-level principal login (created by the provisioning process) or members of the dbmanager database role can create databases. Once a user is a member of the dbmanager database role, it can create a database with the Azure SQL Database CREATE DATABASE command, but that command must be executed in the master database. For more information, see CREATE DATABASE (Transact-SQL). Source: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/ee336235.aspx