This blog has been updated to reflect the new billing options now available for versions of SQL Server 2014 and above.

In the face of changing market conditions and pressure to accelerate growth, the ability for customers to do more with less is critical. And while the cloud has long been the north star for realizing efficiencies and accelerating innovation, at Microsoft, we understand that these benefits also need to happen outside of the cloud. In 2021 we announced the general availability of Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance. Previously only available in Azure, Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance allows customers to build new cloud native applications on any infrastructure, in their on-premises environments and across other public clouds. Now, we are offering a way for customers to make the most of their legacy applications, with Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server.

Yesterday, we announced the general availability of SQL Server 2022, the latest milestone in the 30 year history of SQL Server. This newest edition of SQL Server delivers continued innovation with new hybrid and multicloud capabilities that allow customers to manage and protect their SQL environments in more ways than ever before, no migration required. Together with these innovations, we are also introducing a consumption-based cloud billing model to purchase SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc.

Bring Azure Innovation to SQL Servers Anywhere

Azure Arc is a bridge that extends the Azure platform to help customers build applications and services with the flexibility to run on-premises, at the edge, and in multicloud environments. With Azure Arc, customers can manage their entire SQL estate through a single pane of glass and delivers multilayered security and improved data governance through a single integrated solution.

When customers enable Azure Arc on SQL servers, they can unlock more robust functionalities:

Manage

Manage their entire SQL estate in the Azure portal and get a single, unified view into their entire SQL Server estate to better manage inventory and licenses. Leverage SQL Best Practice Analyzer to automatically evaluate SQL Server environments for performance, scalability, and business continuity, all with no additional cost.​

Govern

Microsoft Purview is a family of data governance, risk, and compliance solutions that can help organizations govern, protect, and manage their environments. With Azure Arc, SQL Server customers will have Purview access policies readily available for those on-premises environments to centralize insights and governance across their entire data estate.

Secure

We also enabled Microsoft Defender for Cloud for SQL Server. Microsoft Defender enhances the security posture of a customer’s SQL Server environments, no matter where they reside. Microsoft Defender continuously scans and proactively identifies any vulnerabilities or attacks that are happening within SQL Server environments. This multi-layered security is made possible through Azure Arc, so data is protected both at the powerful database engine level and by Azure security capabilities from the cloud. 

SQL Server 2022 customers will also be able to benefit from Single Sign-On with Azure Active Directory to secure identities. These are security capabilities that customers have asked for in their on-premises environments for a long time and we are excited to be able to bring them to our SQL server customers.​

Cloud billing model for all SQL workloads*

We are excited to provide customers with a new consumption-based, cloud billing model that provides flexibility to innovate quickly and save on costs. With Pay-as-you-go billing on SQL Server, customers can benefit from:

• Flexibility to choose between consumption-based licensing or the perpetual SQL Server licenses.
• Improved cost efficiencies for both Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition. Eliminate the need to pay full upfront licenses and pay for only what is used, by the hour, which is ideal for spike workloads or ad-hoc usage.
• Support for multicloud and hybrid deployments with consistent billing for all a customer’s entire SQL environment, no matter where they reside.

The PAYG model is enabled by Azure Arc, so connection of the SQL Server to Azure via Azure Arc is required. For SQL Server 2022 customers, the Azure Arc connection is a default part of the SQL Server 2022 setup process and the PAYG billing is available. For customers with prior versions of SQL Server (2014 editions and above), this billing model is available in the Azure Portal once an Azure Arc connection is established. Pricing for the new pay-as-you-go options can be found here.

Innovate anywhere with Azure Arc today​

Azure Arc was built to bring Azure innovation anywhere. With this week’s announcements, our SQL Server customers can unlock cloud-native features on-premises, while benefiting from a more secure and streamlined management experience for their SQL Server environments, no matter where they reside. For SQL Server 2022 customers, these benefits will come already integrated with SQL Server. But customers with SQL Server 2014 and above can unlock many of the same innovations with the help of Azure Arc.

With Azure Arc, SQL Server customers will be able to maximize the value of their investments with technology that allows them to do more with less.

Learn more

Learn about the general availability for SQL Server 2022: general availability for SQL Server 2022.

• More on the latest billing model and how enable Arc for SQL Server. 
• View pricing for SQL Server 2022 and the new pay-as-go options.
• Read more about Azure Arc.

The post Manage, govern, and secure all your SQL Servers with new hybrid capabilities enabled by Azure Arc  appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.

1. It’s consistent

Microsoft is a truly consistent hybrid platform, with the same code base across on-premises, Azure, and Azure Stack. With Azure Stack, you can extend Azure services and capabilities to on-premises environments without any code changes. Interoperability between SQL Server, SQL Server in an Azure Virtual Machine, and Azure SQL Database ensures business continuity and you can easily set up disaster recovery through Always On availability groups.

Download the Azure Stack datasheet

Set up disaster recovery for SQL Server

2. It’s frictionless

The task of migrating your databases to the cloud can be daunting. Microsoft can help you manage the migration seamlessly with several tools and services that simplify the process with minimal downtime. SQL Database Managed Instance provides easy re-hosting with no code changes, enabling a way to migrate huge databases into Azure without changing any code and staying compliant with your applications, without sacrificing performance.

Get started with SQL Database Managed Instance

Learn more about migrating a SQL Server database to SQL in Azure Virtual Machines

3. It’s cost-effective

SQL Server and Azure SQL Database are two of the most cost-effective hybrid data platforms with flexible pricing tiers. Leverage your on-premises licenses and migrate your Windows Server and SQL Server workloads to Azure and save with the Azure Hybrid Benefit (AHB). You can choose from different purchasing options and service tiers to fit your performance and cost needs.

Calculate your savings here with the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) calculator

Allscripts, a leading healthcare software manufacturer, started using Microsoft Azure. In just three weeks, the company lifted and shifted dozens of acquired applications running on 1,000 virtual machines to Azure – migrating their on-premises applications to the cloud by taking advantage of Azure SQL Database Managed Instance.

“Using Azure has dramatically accelerated both our acquisition time and our new product development time. We’ve been able to shut down older, inefficient datacenters and focus more resources on developing great software. This is one factor that moves us ahead in a very competitive market.” – Peter Tomlinson, Director of IS, Technology Operations, Allscripts

Learn more about Allscripts’ hybrid data story

Try SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machine or SQL Database Managed Instance today, and manage your data seamlessly across on-premises and cloud.

The post Three reasons to choose Microsoft for your hybrid data platform appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.

Data is the core of modern applications. Two key trends that help organizations extract the most from their data are the adoption of cloud technologies and the ability to drive new customer experiences with artificial intelligence. Organizations that modernize and harness data, cloud, and AI outperform their competition and are becoming leaders in their field. The most digitally transformed enterprises earn an additional $100 million in operating income!

Join our speakers Claudia Backus, Prem Prakash, and Frederico Rezende for a webinar on how you can transform your applications and enable new customer experiences using the Microsoft data platform.

In this webinar, you’ll learn:

• How to leverage the performance, security and flexibility of the entire Microsoft database portfolio from SQL Server 2017 and Azure SQL Database to open-source databases like Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL.
• How to accelerate your move towards a cloud-based application with the new Azure Database Migration Service.
• How the Microsoft Data Accelerator program can help you modernize your apps across on-premise and cloud.

Register now for this webinar to find out how Microsoft can help you successfully transform your existing applications and ultimately become a SaaS provider with cloud technologies.

The post Webinar: Modernize your applications with cloud and on-premises data solutions from Microsoft appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.

There’s never been a better time to start migrating your database to the cloud. Getting ahead in business today means moving to the cloud so that your company can grow and succeed.

The Azure Database Migration Service Public Preview is the quickest and easiest way for businesses to migrate on-premises databases to the cloud. It’s a fully managed migration service designed to work together with our time-tested migration engines such as the Data Migration Assistant, the Database Experimentation Assistant, and SQL Server Migration Assistant. These tools are tuned to ensure the best migration experience, whether upgrading from legacy versions of Microsoft SQL Server or moving from sources such as Oracle, Sybase, DB2, MySQL, and others. The new service uses a guided, easy-to-implement process to streamline tasks. Regular operations can continue normally during the migration.

Azure Database Migration Service Public Preview uses this functionality to provide rich orchestration capabilities that enable you to organize your databases into project(s) and perform source assessment, schema and data conversion, and validation activities. These activities can be assigned to one or more compute nodes to meet your budget and timeframe goals. With these capabilities, Azure Database Migration Service Public Preview makes it easy to plan migration tasks, run proof-of-concept migrations, author scripting for automation, and ensure that your final production migration to the Microsoft Data Platform is friction-free.

All these capabilities allow you to focus on what’s important for your business and accelerate your Data Estate transformation with the cloud. Now is a great time to find out more about how to make your organization’s database migration as smooth and seamless as possible. For a broad scope of information about cloud migration in general, visit the Azure Migration Center.

Most importantly, be sure to take advantage of the Azure Database Migration Service Public Preview today.

The post Azure Database Migration Service Public Preview brings the “lift and shift” appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.

Today at PASS Summit 2017, we are showcasing new advances across SQL Server 2017 and our Azure data services. And we’re demonstrating how these products – both on-premises and in the cloud – come together to form the ultimate hybrid data platform. Our recent announcements, here at PASS Summit and at Ignite in September are great examples of how we’re empowering data professionals – like our community here at PASS Summit 2017 – to do more and achieve more.

With the recent launch of SQL Server 2017, the first database with AI built-in, you can now run your production workloads on Linux, Windows, and Docker. SQL Server 2017 delivers a mission-critical database with everything built-in, on the platform of your choice. And, it can unlock seamless DevOps with Docker Enterprise Edition containers, bringing efficiency and simplicity to your innovation. New features enable analysis of graph data, and advanced analytics using Python and R. We have incorporated your feedback to add features that will make your day-to-day job easier like Adaptive Query Processing and Automatic Plan Correction by finding and fixing performance regressions automatically.

In addition, SQL Server 2017 running on Windows and Linux can take advantage of new leaps forward in hardware. As demonstrated today by Bob Ward, SQL Server 2017 on SUSE Enterprise Linux Server on an HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen 10 Server with scalable persistent memory ran queries more than 5 times faster than a fast SSD drive array at 50% of the cost – making it the world’s first enterprise-grade diskless database server.

These new cross-platform capabilities have made SQL Server accessible to users of Windows, Linux and Mac. At PASS Summit, we are excited to provide a sneak peek at Microsoft SQL Operations Studio. In a few weeks, users will be able to download and evaluate this free, light-weight tool for modern database development and operations on Windows, Mac or Linux machines for SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, and Azure SQL Data Warehouse. Increase your productivity with smart T-SQL code snippets and customizable dashboards to monitor and quickly detect performance bottlenecks in your SQL databases on-premises or in Azure. You’ll be able to leverage your favorite command line tools like Bash, PowerShell, sqlcmd, bcp and ssh in the Integrated Terminal window. Users can contribute directly to SQL Operations Studio via pull requests from the GitHub repository.

For customers who are ready to modernize to the cloud, Azure SQL Database Managed Instance and Azure Database Migration Service, both now in private preview, making it easy to lift-and-shift your on-premises SQL Server workloads with few or no changes. The upcoming Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server enables customers to use on-premises SQL Server licenses for the easiest lift and shift of SQL Server workloads to the fully-managed cloud.

Azure SQL Database is ready for your most mission-critical workloads. Today, we demonstrated the high scale and performance of SQL Database, with the ability to insert 1.4 million rows per second. In addition, we are making it easier than ever to gain insights from data at this scale. We recently made generally available, the ability to run advanced analytics models from Azure Machine Learning super-fast from T-SQL, with new Native T-SQL scoring. And in today’s demos, we show how you can use this new capability to score large amounts of data in real time – at an average of under 20ms per row!

Starting in early 2016, we have been delivering machine-learning based customer value directly into the Azure SQL Database managed service. More recently, we’ve delivered several intelligent capabilities including automatic tuning, performance monitoring and tuning, Adaptive Query Processing, and Threat Detection. These capabilities significantly reduce time requires to manage anywhere from one to thousands of databases and help proactively defend against potential threats. And the preview Vulnerability Assessment feature helps you more easily understand your security and compliance with new initiatives like GDPR.

In addition to sharing the same “everything built-in” SKU model with SQL Server for lower total cost of ownership versus competitors, Azure SQL Database adds value to your database with these built-in administration features. Now it’s easier than ever to move to Azure SQL Database with our new partnership with Attunity. Customers can now take advantage of Attunity Replicate for Microsoft Migrations, a free offer that accelerates migrations from various database systems, including Oracle, Amazon Redshift, and PostgreSQL to the Microsoft Data Platform.

To simplify analytics in the cloud, we’re releasing a public preview of new hybrid data integration capabilities in Azure Data Factory including the ability to run SSIS packages within the service. This means you can run your SSIS data integration workloads in Azure, without changing the packages – for true hybrid data integration across on-premises and cloud. And our SSIS partner technologies like Biml can now work to automate and enhance data integration across on-premises and cloud.

Dramatic scale investments are now in public preview for Azure SQL Data Warehouse. With the new Compute-Optimized Tier, you can get up to 100x the performance and 5x the scale. This new tier builds on the existing optimized for elasticity tier – giving customers the benefit of a fully-managed platform that suits the demands of their workload.

Visualizing data helps users across the organization take informed action. Microsoft delivers Business Intelligence capabilities to help customers model, analyze, and deliver business insights, which can be consumed by business users on mobile devices, on the web or embedded in applications.

Analysis Services helps you transform complex data into semantic models making it easy for business users to understand and analyze large amounts of data across different data sources. The same enterprise-grade SQL Server Analysis Services you’ve used on-premises is also available as a fully managed service in Azure. With today’s announcement of the Scale Out feature for Azure Analysis Services, you can easily set the number of replicas for your Azure Analysis Services instances to support large numbers of concurrent users with blazing fast query performance.

Power BI is a market leading SaaS service that is easy to get started and simple to use, with data connections to many on-premises and cloud data sources. It allows users across roles and industries to go from data to insights in minutes. A recent key addition to the Power BI portfolio is Power BI Report Server. Power BI Report Server enables self-service BI and enterprise reporting, all in one on-premises solution by allowing you to manage your SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) reports alongside your Power BI reports. Today we announce the availability of a new version of Power BI Report Server that will enable keeping Power BI reports on-premises that connect to any data! Read more on the Power BI blog.

Microsoft’s guiding principle has been to build the highest performing, most secure, and consistent data platform for all your applications across on-premises and cloud. By joining us on this journey, you can build upon your investments in SQL Server to expand the scope of your role in your organization, from database systems to advanced analytics and artificial intelligence. We look forward to working with you!

If you aren’t with us at PASS Summit 2017 this week, you can still see the announcements and demonstrations by purchasing session recordings to stream or download and watch at home. Sign up at the PASS Summit Website.

If you’d like to learn more about the latest enhancements in the Microsoft Data Platform, visit our data platform webpage, or data platform overview on Azure.

The post SQL Server 2017 and Azure Data Services – The ultimate hybrid data platform appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.

Rohan and the Microsoft Data and AI engineering teams will highlight how our customers and community have shaped the latest products and feature enhancements — many of them based on your feedback. This continuous innovation loop is how we have accelerated innovation across our products and services. But the process doesn’t focus on code, it focuses on you and your requirements. Product telemetry, technology blogs, PASS meetups, all the time and anyway we can, we want to listen to what you have to say.

The keynote will be jam-packed with practical demonstrations, giving you a chance to see your feature requests in action. In fact, there are so many great announcements and demos coming that we made a list of the Top five reasons to join us for the PASS Summit 2017 Day 1 Keynote:

1. Accelerate performance – Bob Ward will demonstrate the super fast performance that SQL Server 2017 can achieve, while Conor Cunningham will talk about why performance tuning doesn’t have to be manual drudgery anymore.
2. Get started with Dev Ops – Tobias Ternstrom and Mihaela Blendea will show you quick and painless new ways to set up a development environment, made possible by SQL Server 2017 support for Windows and Linux containers.
3. Create powerful insights in real time – Danielle Dean will demonstrate how high performance and scale in Azure SQL Database can combine with built-in AI to create new and powerful insights from IOT data.
4. Conquer analytics at scale – Community member Scott Currie, CEO of Varigence, will show you how the latest version of Azure Data Factory can combine with partner technologies like BIML to automate data movement in the cloud. Julie Strauss will show off incredible analytics performance gains made possible by the new compute-optimized tier in Azure SQL Data Warehouse.
5. Leverage business intelligence across on-premises and cloud – Christian Wade will demonstrate fast, interactive analysis over large amounts of data in Analysis Services, on-premises and in the cloud. And Riccardo Muti will showcase new features in Power BI Premium that can bring interactive reports and queries and stunning visualizations to your users, wherever your data lives.

That was just a taste of the demos that we hope will surprise you, please you, and make your life just that much easier when you take your new knowledge back to work next week. Registration for this event is almost full, but there are still a few passes left. Or, you can purchase session recordings to stream or download and watch at home. Sign up at the PASS Summit Website.

If you’d like to learn more about the latest enhancements in the Microsoft Data Platform, visit our data platform webpage, or data platform overview on Azure.

The post Top five reasons to join us for the PASS Summit 2017 Day 1 Keynote appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.

Modernize to SQL Server 2017 to begin your journey to cloud

With SQL Server 2017, now on Windows, Linux, and Docker containers, you can build modern applications using the language of your choice, on-premises or in the cloud. SQL Server 2017 offers tremendous performance features for your mission-critical, intelligence, and data warehouse applications. In-Memory OLTP delivers up to 30x faster transaction processing and columnstore indexes deliver up to 100x faster analytical processing. In addition to these features, SQL Server also owns the top TPC-H performance benchmarks for data warehouse.¹ With SQL Server 2017, you can inject intelligence into your applications with transformative insights and real-time analytics at up to one million R predictions per second. Leverage these latest enhancements while protecting your application data with the least-vulnerable database over the last seven years.¹

Modernize on-premises SQL Server or Oracle apps to Azure SQL Database

Seamlessly transform your on-premises apps to SaaS solutions at a cost-effective scale, with flexible performance and unmatched PaaS capabilities, using Azure SQL Database. Azure SQL Database is a fully-managed relational database-as-a-service that you can use to build data-driven applications in the programming language of your choice. It includes features like provisioning and resizing, built-in high availability (HA), automatic backup, point-in-time-restore, and active geo-replication. In addition to the benefits of PaaS, Azure SQL Database also includes built-in intelligence that helps you dramatically reduce the costs of running and managing databases and maximizes both the performance and security of your applications.

Leverage open source investments by modernizing on-premises apps to Azure SQL Database for MySQL and PostgreSQL

Microsoft Azure is the first-class cloud platform for open source technology that empowers you to bring the tools you love, along with the skills you already have, to build and deploy any application. With Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL, you can now choose your favorite database engine delivered as a fully-managed service with high-availability and dynamic scalability. These services bring the community version of PostgreSQL and MySQL to the cloud, and seamlessly integrate with most common open source programming languages (such as PHP, Python, and Node.js) and application development frameworks (such as WordPress, Magento, Drupal, Django, and Ruby on Rails). If you want to quickly build and deploy a new app, you can now take advantage of managed service capabilities offered by Azure while continuing to use the familiar community tools with your MySQL or PostgreSQL databases.

Lift and shift on-premises SQL Server apps to the cloud with Azure SQL Database Managed Instance

SQL Database Managed Instance is an expansion of the existing Azure SQL Database service designed to quickly and easily move your SQL apps to a fully-managed PaaS, without re-designing your application. Azure SQL Database Managed Instance provides high compatibility with on-premises SQL Server programming model and out-of-box support and tools to manage data and enable new scenarios in the cloud for your applications. This includes features like SQL CLR, SQL Server Agent, and cross-database querying. Using a fully-managed PaaS database frees your IT overhead, dramatically reducing operational costs and redirecting resources to more value-add activities. Azure SQL Database Managed Instance is scheduled to be available for public preview later this fall.

Apply to our Microsoft Data Accelerator program to upgrade your on-premises applications or begin the journey to migrate them to the cloud. The Microsoft Data Accelerator provides access to highly reliable, automated upgrade services for the four scenarios highlighted above. Backed by the rich experience of upgrading thousands of applications, Microsoft Data Accelerator enables you to modernize your applications and provide a broader range of platform choices to your customers.

Learn more and apply for the Microsoft Data Accelerator Program.

¹According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, SQL Server has had the fewest security vulnerabilities over the past seven years when compared with other major database vendors.

The post Modernize your applications across on-premise and cloud with the Microsoft Data Accelerator Program appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.

In this free webinar, our Azure experts share how and why migration to the cloud is now easier, faster, and more cost-effective. Discover how to:

• Realize cost savings by preserving your investment in already purchased on-premises licenses.
• Save four times the investment you made on cores, leverage cloud flexibility for ROI, and uncover other cost savings in your environment.
• Migrate easily with the new Azure SQL Database Managed Instance, shifting to the cloud without having to rearchitect apps.
• Prepare for your migration with four important steps.

Tune in to our live webinar, Modernize to the cloud in four quick, easy, and cost-effective steps, on October 5, 2017, at 10:00 AM Pacific Time (UTC-7) to learn how modernizing your data with the cloud is within your reach. You’ll also get the chance to have your questions answered in real time by our team. Register today.

The post Taking your data to the cloud is easier than you thought appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.

In this session Rohan Kumar, General Manager, Data Systems Group, discusses all the latest news — from upcoming SQL Server 2017 general availability, to the new Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server, to serverless computing with Azure Cosmos DB and Azure Functions. Hear how to take your SQL Server Integration Services to the cloud with Azure Data Factory’s new hybrid functionality, plus learn about the latest performance and scale enhancements for Azure Data Services. This 75-minute session is packed with demonstrations and customer testimonials from the likes of ASOS, Caradigm, and dv01.

Join us now:

• Watch the Data Platform general session on SQL Server 2017 and Azure Data Services
• See other Microsoft Ignite 2017 sessions on-demand
• Learn more about SQL Server 2017

The post View on-demand: Microsoft Data Platform – SQL Server 2017 and Azure Data Services appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.

The post New managed SQL server Integration Service hosting capability in Data Factory appeared first on Microsoft SQL Server Blog.