Azure SQL Database managed instance Tutorial

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In this article, we will discuss What is Azure SQL Database managed instance, its key features, Service tiers, limitations, etc.

Azure SQL Database managed instance Tutorial

Let us discuss a complete tutorial on Azure SQL Database managed instance. Before that, let’s discuss what it is exactly.

What is Azure SQL Database managed instance

Azure SQL Managed Instance is a scalable and intelligent database service that provides fully managed paas. Another cool feature of the Azure SQL managed instance is it is 100% compatible with the latest enterprise edition of SQL Server.

The most important feature of the Azure SQL Managed Instance is it helps you to lift and shift your on-premises applications to the cloud environment with a few easy steps. The migration became quite easy with the help of the Azure SQL Managed Instance.

Azure SQL Managed Instance has all the Pass capabilities like automatic version updates, patching, automated backup, high availability, etc.

The Azure SQL Managed Instance is designed for customers who want to migrate many applications from on-premises or self-built to the Azure Cloud environment.

What is azure SQL database managed instance

Key Features of Azure SQL Managed Instance

  1. It provides you with automatic patching and version upgrade capability.
  2. There is no need to take any headaches for managing the hardware and the infrastructure.
  3. It is quite easy to integrate with the other pass data services.
  4. Most importantly, it is highly secure with single sign-on, Azure Active Directory authentication support, SQL auditing, Advanced threat protection, etc.
  5. Build-in feature for database monitoring metrics.
  6. This also provides the automatic patching software capability.
  7. It has the maximum latest database engine features.

Service tiers

There are two types of service tiers available in the case of Azure SQL managed instance, and those are as below

  1. General purpose: Mainly used for applications that are meant for typical performance and I/O latency requirements with high-performance Azure Blob storage (8 TB) support and high availability features.
  2. Business-critical: This service tier is mainly used for applications that are meant for low I/O latency requirements and with the highest performance with super-fast local SSD storage and excellent features like high availability, In-memory OLTP, additional read-only database replica, etc.

Integration with Azure Active Directory

The Azure SQL managed Instance supports Azure Active Directory server principal logins and the SQL server DB engine logins.

The Azure Active Directory server principal logins provide you the ability to specify the users and groups from your Azure AD tenant as the principals.

Authentication Options

Below are the authentication options supported by Azure SQL Managed Instance.

  1. SQL Authentication: Where you need to provide the username and password.
  2. Azure Active Directory Authentication: This authentication mechanism uses the identities managed by Azure Active Directory and is one of the highly secure authentication mechanisms.

Supported Security Features

As we all know, the security feature is the most needed one. There are many key features in terms of security that are supported for the SQL Managed Instance.

  1. One of the important security features is the Advanced threat protection feature,, which provides an additional layer of security intelligence that helps protect your database from potentially harmful attempts.
  2. The Azure-managed instance’s auditing security feature helps you track the database events. Then, it helps you to write them to an audit log file that helps you to maintain compliance, closely analyze the database activity, etc.
  3. Another important security feature is the dynamic data masking that helps you save sensitive data from unauthorized access.
  4. One more important security feature of the Azure-managed instance is Row-level security. The RLS feature helps you implement the restrictions on data rows in a database table based on the user category.

Azure SQL managed instance limitations

There are a few limitations in terms of file size

  • The maximum number of database files per instance is up to 280 unless the instance storage size or Azure Premium limit has been reached in case of general purpose.
  • The maximum number of database files per instance is 32,767 files per database unless the instance storage size limit has been reached in case of business-critical.
  • The maximum data file size is (max 2 TB – 8 TB) in case of general purpose.
  • In the case of business-critical, the maximum data file size is (up to 1 TB – 4 TB).
  • Max log file size is limited to 2 TB in case of general-purpose and business-critical.
  • The maximum number of databases per instance is 100 in both the case of general-purpose and business-critical scenarios.

Check out the steps to create the Azure SQL managed instance now.

Conclusion

In this Azure article, we discussed a complete tutorial on Azure SQL Database managed instance. Thanks for reading this article !!!