Azure SQL Managed Instance

Azure SQL Managed Instance is almost the same SQL Server that we manage in an on-premise environment that was announced in May 2017 and made publicly available as of October 1, 2018, in addition to the advantages of Azure SQL Database such as automatic backups, updates, performance tuning and Intelligent Insights.

It is a cloud product that includes Therefore, it is a service that facilitates the transition of on-prem SQL Server uses to the cloud.

Note that when you migrate to Azure SQL Managed Instance, you are migrating not only databases but also languages.

If you are using on-prem SQL Server Standard or Enterprise Azure SQL Managed Instance you can save up to 55%.

The features in Azure SQL Managed Instance that are not in Azure SQL database are as follows.

Native Backup & Restore
Global Temporary tables
Cross-Database query & transactions
Linked Servers
SQL CLR
SQL Agent
Database Mail

In addition to these supported features, DTC (distributed transaction coordinator) Azure SQL Managed Instace is also not supported.

Purchasing Model

Azure SQL Managed Instance works with a vCore-based purchasing model.

Its vCore-based operation provides flexibility in different workload requirements such as memory and storage.

The vCore model supports two hardware types, Gen4 and Gen5. The processor and storage features they support are as follows.

Gen4 : Intel E5-2673 v3 (Haswell) 2.4 GHz processors (1 vCore is 1 Physical Core), 7 GB per vCore Memory with 3 GB per vCore In-Memory, and max storage size of 8 TB

Gen5 : intel E5-2673 v4 (Broadwell) 2.3 GHz processors, fast NVMe SSD, (1 vCore = 1 Logical Processor (hyper-thread), 5.1 GB memory per vCore, 2.6 GB per vCore In-Memory, and a max storage size of 8TB.

The vCore model comes with two service tiers.

General use: As the name suggests, it has been developed for general use.

Business Critical use: As the name suggests, it supports high performance. It provides low IO delays (1.2 Ms) and 24-48 MB data processing per second.

How to connect to Azure SQL Managed Instance?

Azure SQL Managed Instance is a more isolated virtual machine hosted service than Azure SQL Server.

A virtual cluster is created when you create Azure SQL Managed Insance.

Multiple Azure SQL Managed Instances can be hosted in this created virtual cluster.

Applications connect as <ManagedInstanceName>.<dns_zone>.database.windows.net.

In order to connect from On-Prem, you can connect via VPN or Azure ExpressRoute. You can use SQL Server Management Studio or Azure Data Studio for connection.

Azure SQL Managed Instance can be used in Enterprise Agreement (EA), Pay-as-you-go, Cloud Service Provider (CSP), Enterprise Dev/Test and Pay-As-You-Go Dev/Test subscriptions.

If you have a different subscription type, you cannot create an Azure SQL Managed Instance.