Back in mid-May, Azure SQL Database received an overhaul of its failover capabilities, making the whole process more transparent. Now, the service's toolset has been enhanced with an assortment of new performance levels and the ability to choose storage add-ons.
Hitting the service in public preview is a range of new performance levels in the Standard tier for the single database option, which increases the maximum DTUs - Database Transaction Units - from its previous limit of 100, all the way up to 3000. The storage limit - not the included storage - has also received an increase, going up to 1TB across the board, both for Standard and Premium tiers, save for S0-S2 and P11-P15, which cap off at 250GB and 4TB, respectively.
For those curious, the new plans are as follows:
| Performance level | DTUs | Included storage | Storage limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard S4 | 200 | 250GB | 1TB |
| Standard S6 | 400 | 250GB | 1TB |
| Standard S7 | 800 | 250GB | 1TB |
| Standard S9 | 1600 | 250GB | 1TB |
| Standard S12 | 3000 | 250GB |
1TB |
Those who use the elastic pool option haven't been forgotten, receiving some upgrades of their own, this time on the storage limit front. The changes made are for:
| Service tier | Pool eDTUs | Included Storage | Storage limit |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Standard |
50 | 50GB | 500GB |
| 100 | 100GB | 750GB | |
| 200 | 200GB | 1TB | |
| 300 | 300GB | 1.25TB | |
| 400 | 400GB | 1.5TB | |
| 800 | 800GB | 2TB | |
| 1200 | 1.2TB | 2.5TB | |
| 1600 | 1.6TB | 3TB | |
| 2000 | 2TB | 3.5TB | |
| 2500 | 2.4TB | 4TB | |
| 3000 | 2.9TB | 4TB | |
| Premium and Premium RS | 125 | 250GB | 1TB |
| 250 | 500GB | 1TB | |
| 500 | 750GB | 1TB |
Perhaps the change that will most interest those who use the service on a day-to-day basis is the ability to have storage add-ons, independent of the selected service tier or performance plan. According to Microsoft, this new ability "reduces costs by allowing more storage without having to increase DTUs or eDTUs."
Specifically regarding how the adding of extra storage is handled, the firm states:
Storage provisioned above the included amount is charged extra and billed on an hourly basis. The total price for a single database (or an elastic pool) is the price based on DTUs (or eDTUs) plus the price for any extra storage provisioned. Storage for a single database or elastic pool can be provisioned in increments of 250 GB up to 1 TB, and then in increments of 256 GB beyond 1 TB.
In terms of pricing, if you want to add more storage to your Standard tier option, you will need to pay $0.085/GB/month more, whereas extra storage for a Premium tier will add $0.170/GB/month to your bill.
It needs to be said that the values above have been tagged as "preview price", meaning that they might be subject to change once these plan changes leave public preview.
More information regarding Azure SQL Database's resources can be found here, with pricing details residing at the service's dedicated page.
