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Migrating databases. When your databases anchor applications, employees, and customers, migration plunks a big rock in the pond that is your business, creating lasting ripples. Ripples that force thoughtful, coordinated action across business units to prevent outages. Add moving to the cloud into the equation and the potential tide of complications rises.
In the past, undertaking migration often required you to refactor your databases to make them compatible with cloud database servers. Security policies needed thorough analysis and updating for cloud models. Factor in potential downtimes, and migration once loomed as a labor-intensive hit to business productivity. This made migrating an on-premises SQL Server to the cloud an ROI evaluation against the once heavy-lift tradeoffs required by moving to the cloud.
Azure SQL Managed Instance eliminates these tradeoffs with the broadest SQL Server engine compatibility offering available. Because of the compatibility level, Azure SQL Managed Instance doesn’t require you to compromise much, if anything, to deploy SQL Server within a fully managed aPlatform as a Service (PaaS) environment. Because the SQL Server 2022 Enterprise Edition and Azure SQL Managed Instance engines are almost one hundred percent identical, making it possible to migrate both ways. You don’t need to refactor databases or risk negative performance impacts to migrate to Azure SQL Managed Instance. Azure SQL Managed Instance is also compatible with earlier SQL Server editions.
Additionally, the storage engine format alignment between Azure SQL Managed Instance and SQL Server 2022 provides an easy way to copy or move databases from Azure SQL Managed Instance to a SQL Server 2022 instance. A back up from Azure SQL Managed Instance can be restored on SQL Server 2022. The standalone SQL Server can be hosted on-premises, on virtual machines in Azure, or in other clouds. This puts you in control of your data, ensuring data mobility regardless of SQL Server location.
Compatibility between the Azure SQL Managed Instance and SQL Server 2022 engines extends to the database engine settings and the database settings. As with the standalone version of SQL Server, with Azure SQL Managed Instance, you decide what server configuration best serves your business needs. To get started with Azure SQL Managed Instance, you choose the performance tier, service tier, and the reserved compute, along with data and backup storage options, that make the most sense for your applications and your data.
Since Azure SQL Managed Instance is built on the latest SQL Server engine, it’s always up to date with the latest features and functionality, including online operations, automatic plan corrections, and other enterprise performance enhancements. A comparison of the available features is explained in Feature comparison: Azure SQL Managed Instance versus SQL Server.
Azure SQL Managed Instance offers two performance tiers:
- General purpose - for applications with typical performance, I/O latency requirements, and built-in High Availability (HA).
- Business Critical - for applications requiring low I/O latency and higher HA requirements. It provides two non-readable secondaries and one readable secondary along with the readable/writable primary replica. The readable secondary allows you to distribute reporting workloads off your primary.
Once you’re running on Azure SQL Managed Instance, changing your service tier (CPU vCores or reserved storage changes) occurs online and incurs little to no downtime. To optimize performance of transaction processing, data ingestion, data load, and transient data, leverage In-Memory OLTP, available in the Business Critical tier.
Migrate from your on-premises SQL Server to Azure SQL Managed Instance with ease. Leverage the fully automated Azure Data Migration Service or set up an Azure SQL Managed Instance link. The link feature uses an expanded version of distributed availability groups to extend your on-prem SQL Server availability group to Azure SQL Managed Instance safely, replicating data in near real-time. With Azure SQL Managed Instance link feature, you can migrate, test, and then perform a simple, controlled fail-over.
While Azure SQL Managed Instance provides nearly one hundred percent compatibility with SQL Server, you will notice some changes in the transition from SQL Server standalone editions. These differences are based on architectural dissimilarities. Certain SQL features (audits, for instance) operate in a fashion that optimizes cloud architecture. Cloud architecture is designed to maximize resource utilization and minimize costs while ensuring high levels of availability, reliability, and security. Azure architecture leverages resource sharing while guaranteeing security and isolation. This resource sharing provides you with a flexible environment that can scale rapidly in response to customer needs. Because high availability is built into Azure SQL Managed Instance, it cannot be configured or controlled by users as it can be in SQL Server 2022.
Explore the differences between SQL Server 2022 Enterprise Edition and Azure SQL Managed Instance.
What’s more, Azure SQL Managed Instance is backed by Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, ensuring that your environment is performant and secure from the silicon layer. With 8 to 40 powerful cores and a wide range of frequency, feature, and power levels Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors are a part of an end-to-end solution for your data.
Come delve into Azure SQL Server Managed Instance. The depth and breadth of SQL engine compatibility provides you with a safe, simple, full-featured, and flexible migration path. Azure SQL Managed Instance puts you in complete control of your data, your databases, your performance, and your business. Microsoft’s continued commitment to improvement means you can take advantage of the benefits of the cloud with Azure SQL Managed Instance and modernize your on-premises SQL Server databases.
Dive deeper into the benefits of migrating to Azure SQL Managed Instance. Check out the on-demand recording: https://www.mssqltips.com/sql-server-video/932/modernize-your-apps-with-azure-sql-managed-instance/Modernize Your Apps with Azure SQL Managed Instance.
Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.
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