Install and configure SQL Server instances and features
- By Randolph West, William Assaf, Joseph D'Antoni, Louis Davidson, Meagan Longoria, Elizabeth Noble
- 7/3/2023
SQL Server on Azure virtual machines
Azure options are continuously evolving, making it hard to comprehensively cover them in any one book. SQL Server 2022 is touted as the most Azure-connected version to date. It is Microsoft’s way of bringing you hybrid flexibility from ground to cloud, so it is worthwhile covering some of those intersections here.
At the time of writing, there are three options:
Azure VMs. VMs hosted in Azure. They function very similarly to VMs in your on-premises environment, except they are hosted in Azure. You have the same responsibilities for protection and management, but with the utilities and services of Azure at your disposal.
SQL Server on Azure VMs. Azure VMs with a preset configuration of SQL Server you choose based on your desired workload. The default workload environment is production, but there are options for dev/test as well. You can choose between different performance tiers; some focus on CPU-intensive workloads, while others focus on memory-optimized workloads, with variations in between. These tiers provide a wide selection of virtual hardware to run enterprise applications, relational databases, analytics, in-memory workloads, and intensive batch processing.
Azure Arc VMs. VMs that can be created in one of your non-Azure environments. Typically, this is on-premises, but it could also be another cloud provider, public or private.