New Azure SQL Database offerings add capabilities to scale data up and out

As written by Tiffany Wissner, Senior Director of Data Platform Marketing on Technet.com.

At Microsoft we’re committed to meeting the needs of our customers by offering choices as they build cloud applications for scale and performance. Today we’re continuing to deliver on this commitment with two announcements:
•New high performance levels for Azure SQL Database, P4 and P11, with greater flexibility to start small and scale up as data grows
•Basic and Premium tier for Elastic Databases for more flexibility for SaaS developers looking to scale out with higher performance and more resource control.

As more customers build more powerful applications in Azure using Azure SQL Database, we've seen strong demand for more options to scale performance. We’re dedicated to offering a portfolio of data services for cloud applications that effectively scales up to support data growth from more users, and scales out to support growth from more customers and fluctuating resource demands.

To meet this scale up demand, we are announcing the release of new Azure SQL Database Premium performance levels, P4 and P11. With the introduction of both P4 and P11, we’ve expanded the range of throughput performance developers can leverage to scale their applications. Developers can quickly start with our basic or standard performance tiers and easily scale database performance up to 350 times greater with our premium tier as their data needs grow – all without code or application changes. This enables developers to match application needs with the right database performance.

On the scale out front, we have seen an increasing demand for Elastic Database pools since we announced its public preview. We’ve seen SaaS developers adopt and embrace elastic databases because it makes it easier to manage their growing number of customers. With Elastic Database pools SaaS developers can manage hundreds of databases for each of their customers, optimize the performance of each database, and manage the cost of these databases to support their explosive growth. This means their customers still get a great experience, even during peak usage periods, and there’s no need to over-provision resources during lulls.

One example is StudioPlus, which offers solutions for professional photographers. CEO Matthew Hunt says, “We are expanding our legacy on-premises solution with a SaaS solution. Azure SQL Database is a fundamental part of this journey because it allows us to leverage an existing code base and gives us a platform for unlimited customer growth. From a DevOps perspective, it’s simple to set up and manage Azure SQL Database Elastic Database pools to support the unlimited scale-out of a one-database-per-customer pattern.”

To support the increasing demand of Elastic Database Pools, we are now introducing a public preview of two additional service tiers for Elastic Databases, Basic and Premium. These new tiers give organizations and developers with SaaS applications greater options and flexibility for getting started with Elastic Databases and scaling out to meet new customer demands.

We are thrilled that we can support StudioPlus and a growing number of developers on their SaaS journey with Azure SQL Database.

Our announcements today add scale and performance options, and these releases are just part of our end-to-end data platform. We continue to make it easier for customers to maximize their data dividends with our data platform and services. It’s never been easier to capture, transform, mash-up, analyze and visualize any data, of any size, at any scale, in its native format using familiar tools, languages and frameworks in a trusted environment on-premises and in the cloud.