I am unable to locate the cost per transaction for a Azure SQL Database.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/sql-database/sql-database-single-databases-manage
I know the SQL Server database is about 5$ per month but how much for the transactions?
If I go to the Azure Pricing Calculator (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/) they do not seem to have the info. They list the price for a single database as $187.77 so that is not the same service as they one you create if you use the link above.
TL;DR:
Azure SQL pricing is "flat": first you choose a performance level for your database which has a fixed cost (e.g. S6 for $580/mo or S1 for $30/mo), and this is billed by the second. Azure does not bill your account for actual IO/CPU usage.
The rest:
There is no single "cost per transaction" because a "transaction" is not a single uniform amount of work for a database server (e.g. a single SELECT over a small table with indexes is significantly less IO and CPU intensive compared to a MERGE over millions of rows).
There three different types of Azure-SQL deployment in Azure, with their own different formulas for determining monthly cost:
Single database (DTU)
Single database (vCore)
Elastic pool
Managed Instance
I assume you're interested in the "single database" deployment types, as "Managed instance" is a rather niche application and "Elastic pool" is to save money if you have lots (think: hundreds or thousands) of smaller databases. If you have a small number (e.g. under 100) of larger databases (in terms of disk space) then "Single database" is probably right for you. I won't go into detail on the other deployment types.
If you go with DTU-based Single Database deployment (which most users do), then the pricing follows this general formula:
Monthly-price = ( Instances * Performance-level )
Where Performance-level is the selected SKU for the minimum level of performance you need. You can change this level up or down at will at any point in time as you're billed by the second and not per month (but per-second pricing is difficult to work into a monthly price estimate)
A "DTU" (Database Throughput Unit) is a unit of measure that represents the actual cost to Microsoft of running your database, which is then passed on to you somewhat transparently (disregarding whatever profit-margin Microsoft has per-DTU, of course).
When determining what Performance-level to get for your database you should select the performance level that offers the minimum number of DTUs that your application actually needs (you determine this through profiling and estimating, usually by starting off with a high-performance database for a few hours (which won't cost more than a few dollars) and running your application code - if the actual DTU usage numbers are low (e.g. you get an "S6" 400 DTU (~$580/mo) database and see that you only use 20 DTUs under normal loads then you can safely leave it on the "S1" 20DTU (~$30/mo) performance level
The question about what a DTU actually is has been asked before, so to avoid creating a duplicate answer please read that QA here: Azure SQL Database "DTU percentage" metric
It is based on your requirement, I am using a single instance Azure SQL Database, so basically based on your cpu cost and your transaction limit and space called 'DTU'. For this totally based on your requirement.
If it is in VM (Virtual machine), that applied your vm cost and your sqlserver cost (if you do not have licence of sqlserver).
Cost https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/
Related
I am new to Azure and I am currently exploring the possibility of migrating my database from a Virtual private server to an Azure hosted sql database. I can see the potential advantage of moving to azure, less maintenance, cloud hosted, cheaper.
My VPS i currently pay £36 every month, this is a fixed payment. However on Azure using the pricing calculator i can see that with a standard tier it would cost about £14, which is a huge saving. My only issue is that I have chosen the DTU. Now i am worried that for one month it may be fine, but for another month cost may spike. The reason why I have been hesitant to migrate is because I am fine with paying £36 a month knowing i can use less or more and i will still be at a fixed cost.
On the other hand - using azure with dtu, there is no guarantee that i may have the same cost each month, it may be potentially higher.
My question is can someone explain DTU for me and also is there a way where i can make sure my cost is low without having any surprise costs in the future?
In DTU-based SQL purchase models, a fixed set of resources is assigned to the database or elastic pool via performance tiers: Basic, Standard and Premium. This model is best for customers who prefer the simplicity of fixed payments each month, where the simplicity of pre-configured options is desired.
You need to first measure the resource utilization to check now much DTU is enough for you.
Measure the following utilization metrics for at least an hour so the calculator can analyze utilization over time to provide you the best recommendation:
Processor - % Processor Time
Logical Disk - Disk Reads/sec
Logical Disk - Disk Writes/sec
Database - Log Bytes Flushed/sec
Refer this document to calculate the database resource consumption. Once you will get the output, calculate button to view your recommended Service Tier/Performance Level and DTUs on the same page.
Your consumption cost will be as per given image below:
You can also check your the pricing based on the your calculated DTUs here.
so I have this issue. Our client using MS SQL databases. Two months ago they migrated their databases to the SQL Enterprise 2019 from earlier version and Standard edition.
They major reason was to secure high availability through feature in MS SQL - Availability groups.
After that our application get really slowed. In the simply way to tell, customer startup an app select workspace and then its takes like 15 seconds to load data.
First step is just sending request to database to select data - no inserts, deletes or any high performance processes.
App is using and working with geographical and geometry data, every geo objects is saved in database as geometry data type. The first huge, major select is causing the slow issue.
When I was looking at activity mon under wait categories is only one thing suspicious to me and its type Other.
In database I dont see any high cost queries and availability group mode is set to synchronous.
If Im getting this right, the synchronous mode should not be the cause of this problem because this database is clearly for reading a data not as I mentioned modifying.
I made changes to some instance parameters and set Optimize for Ad hoc workloads to True and and threshold for parallelism from 5 to 20.
Other thing which I tried was create a new app source database and database which contains geo data inside of that SQL instance and didnt add them to availability groups.
From application we are using, for test causes, a connection to the one instance with new test databases.
Neither of this settings work. So guys if you have any idea or any experience with this please help me.
Here is a screen of top 10 waits from sys dmv.
1 - Stats recompute...
When you are going from a SQL version to a higher one, you must first change the compatibility level (to have some performance benefits) and then recompute all statistics in the database with a FULLSCAN. Why ? Because each version of SQL Server come with a new optimizer that have new operators, new algorithms and many improvements... To stick to this new version of the optimizer the method of computing statistics and the form of the results of these calculations, is rethought with each modification of the engine ... so much so that if we use the old statistics with a new engine, it is like taking the census of the population in 1930, to plan the construction of roads, schools and hospitals for the current actual population ....
2 - SQL Server Editions...
When upscaling SQL Server from Standard to Enterprise, you need to increase the "hardware" (even if it is a VM) because many of the features that runs under Enterprise version, and does not exists in Standard, needs some more computationnal resources. As an example, using the AUTO_UPDATE_STATISTICS_ASYNC will use automatically one more thread to the detriment of other processes... In comparison, using a Rolls Royce or a Hummer, instead of a VolksWagen is arguably more comfortable, faster ... but requires more oil and more expensive insurance!
3 - Synchronous AVG...
Synchronous AlwaysOn availability groups must have a very fast and faultless network .... If this is not the case, the replication of update requests can drag performance down, especially if you are in pessimistic lockdown (default mode).
4 - Transaction logs...
One common global lack of performances can be the latency to write the transaction log.
5 - Tempdb files...
Another current global lack of performances can be the latency to access tempdb files.
For those two file problems, use the Glenn Berry latency file query that will give you a indice... Good values are under 7 ms for reads and 15 ms for writes...
CONCLUSION
Many other factors can contribute to slow down you system. But without no more information, we cannot help you...
I have been trying to do a PITR of a 2GB S0 Azure SQL Server db. It has been running for over 24hrs. The DB restore progress has been saying 50% complete for 18
Hrs without any errors. Should I upgrade the server DTUs and size or the actual service tier?
According to this post. On SQL Database, the "horsepower" is measured by Database Throughput Units, or just "DTUs". This unit is measured by an integer and may variate from 5 to 1750. Every database edition has an offer of one or more "Service Objectives", which are directly related to the number of DTUs and the price to be played.
In the following image, you can find the list of "Service Objectives" (S0, P3, Basic, P11, S3, etc…) per SQL Database Edition and its respective prices. Notice that Microsoft is always updating its offer, so those prices and Service Objectives per Edition may be outdated when you read this post:
One option is a more conservative, responsible and dignified way to choose the number of DTUs, and is based on real data about your database activity. It is the DTU Calculator (http://dtucalculator.azurewebsites.net/), an online service that helps us by advising about the most appropriate Service Objective for a database. You just need to download a PowerShell script, available on the DTU Calculator website, and run it in the server where your database is located. As soon as you run this script, the following data will be measured and recorded in a CSV file:
Processor – % Processor Time
Logical Disk – Disk Reads/sec
Logical Disk – Disk Writes/sec
Database – Log Bytes Flushed/sec
Once the collection is done, you just need to upload the file generated by the script and interpret the results. Here is a sample of one of the charts generated by the DTU Calculator, indicating that 89.83% of the database load would run well with the Service Objective S3, of the "Standard" SQL Database edition.
Here is a decision tree that will help you to reach the optimal point for your database.
So I think you can increase the DTU appropriately to speed up the process. :)
If you are on a S0 you are using Azure SQL Database, not a Managed Instance.
2GB is quite small, it should have recovered the point in time restore in an hour or so.
Contact Microsoft Support.
We have some DB instances on Azure, I am trying to optimize DB Performance on Azure. Can any explain what is Azure DTU & How can we calculate Azure DTU ?
1.What is Azure DTU:
Azure SQL Database provides two purchasing models: vCore-based purchasing model and DTU-based purchasing model.
DTU-based purchasing model is based on a bundled measure of compute, storage, and IO resources. Compute sizes are expressed in terms of Database.Transaction Units (DTUs) for single databases and elastic Database Transaction Units (eDTUs) for elastic pools.
The Database Transaction Unit (DTU) represents a blended measure of CPU, memory, reads, and writes. The DTU-based purchasing model offers a set of preconfigured bundles of compute resources and included storage to drive different levels of application performance: Basic, Standard and Premium.
For more details, please see: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/sql-database/sql-database-service-tiers-dtu
2.How to optimize DB Performance:
Since your DB instances are already on Azure, you can monitor your DB instances and improve your DB Performance with Azure Portal by troubleshot or change the service tiers. Please see: Monitoring and performance tuning: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/sql-database/sql-database-monitor-tune-overview#improving-database-performance-with-more-resources
3.How to calculate Azure DTU:
Here is a link about Azure SQL Database DTU Calculator.This calculator will help us determine the number of DTUs for our existing SQL Server database(s) as well as a recommendation of the minimum performance level and service tier that we need before we migrate to Azure SQL Database.
If you still keep the database backup file, i think you can try this calculator.
Please see: http://dtucalculator.azurewebsites.net/
The significant consideration of the Azure SQL Database is to meet the performance requirement of the deployed database against the minimum cost. Undoubtedly, nobody wants to pay money for the redundant resources or features that they do not use or plan to use.
At this point, Microsoft Azure offers two different purchasing models to provide cost-efficiency:
Database Transaction Unit (DTU)-Based purchasing model.
Virtual Core (vCore)-Based purchasing model
A purchasing model decision directly affects the database performance and the total amount of the bills. In my thought, If the deployed database will not consume too many resources the DTU-Based purchase model will be more suitable.
Now, we will discuss the details about these two purchasing models in the following sections.
Database Transaction Unit (DTU)-Based purchasing model
In order to understand the DTU-Based purchase model more clearly, we need to clarify what does make a sense DTU in Azure SQL Database. DTU is an abbreviation for the “Database Transaction Unit” and it describes a performance unit metric for the Azure SQL Database. We can just like the DTU to the horsepower in a car because it directly affects the performance of the database. DTU represents a mixture of the following performance metrics as a single performance unit for Azure SQL Database:
CPU
Memory
Data I/O and Log I/O
Elastic Pool
Briefly, Elastic Pool helps us to automatically manage and scale the multiple databases that have unpredictable and varying resource demands upon a shared resource pool. Through the Elastic Pool, we don’t need to scale the databases continuously against resource demand fluctuation. The databases which take part in the pool consumes the Elastic Pool resources when they are needed but they can not exceed the Elastic Pool resource limitations so that it provides a cost-effective solution.
Properly Estimation of the DTU for Azure SQL Database
After deciding to use DTU-based purchase model, we have to find out the following question-answer with logical reasons:
Which service tier and how much DTUs are required for my workload when migrating to Azure SQL?
DTU Calculator will be the main solution to estimate the DTUs requirement when we are migrating on-premise databases to Azure SQL Database. The main idea of this tool is capturing the various metrics utilization from the existing SQL Server that affects the DTUs and then it tries to estimate approximately DTUs and service tier in the light of the collected performance utilizations. DTU calculator collects the following metrics through the either Command-Line Utility or PowerShell Script and saves these metrics to a CSV file.
Processor - % Processor Time
Logical Disk - Disk Reads/sec
Logical Disk - Disk Writes/sec
Database - Log Bytes Flushed/sec
Extracted from https://www.spotlightcloud.io/blog/what-is-dtu-in-azure-sql-database-and-how-much-do-we-need.
Check this well-written article on calculating DTU
Credit to original author : Esat Erkec
I am working on an eCommerce website designed to present a large number of SKUs. The SQL Server schema describing these products is normalized to the extent that, a few years ago, it became unreasonably slow to retrieve the necessary information to present to customers, so we changed our infrastructure such that we would bear the cost of loading the data for each product once and then store that data in an AppFabric cache (previously Velocity).
Over time, the complexity of requirements placed on our AppFabric infrastructure has grown (imagine that), forcing us to spend a considerable amount of time writing code for handling data retrieval from our cache, data updates including incremental updates, etc.
We happen to have much of our product data stored in a denormalized form in a side database, so for experimentation's sake I wrote a console app to randomly select one of our ~150K SKUs at a time, and then retrieve the record for that product from our denormalized table.
I was surprised to find that I was able to select these records in about the same average time that I could select a record from our AppFabric cache, about 2.5 ms average in both cases. I'm sure in both cases the data is coming from an in-memory cache of one sort or another, be it AppFabric or disk cache, and the 2.5 ms is bumping against a bare minimum amount of time for a network round trip.
This makes me think we might be better off just using denormalized data in SQL Server for our high load/high performance needs. The management tools for SQL Server-based data are so much better. All of the devs on our team are adept at using Management Studio, whereas with AppFabric we have one dev who can use PowerShell to a) Give us a count of records stored in the cache and b) dump the cache. Any other management functionality we have to create ourselves.
This makes me ask why anyone would want to use AppFabric at all. We are not concerned with cost, because the cost of the development efforts we have to apply to an AppFabric-related solution vastly outweigh even the cost of SQL Server licensing.
Thank you for whatever feedback you can provide to help our team decide the best direction to move forward.
Deciding to use a caching mechanism should be a very thought out process -- and isn't really always the right choice. However, the primary reason for using caching over a durable persistance model is to manage an extremely high transaction load.
In AppFabric Cache I can setup a distributed set of servers to work off of one logical repository -- with built in load balancing. So, unlike Microsoft SQL Server which has no way of providing clustered instances for the purpose of load balancing -- if I'm reading and writing 50 to 100 million times a day the cache is a more viable solution for sharing those resources. Then those writes can be queued to the durable persistence model over time ensuring that there are no real peaks in usage because it's spread out both across the caching fabric and the durable store.
Using AppFabric rather than a dedicated cache-aside database containing a denormalised schema also provides the benefit of fine grained control over cache key expiry, eviction, and tuned region policies. You would have to roll this yourself if you used SqlServer. I also agree with #mperrenoud03 comments about load balancing and high transaction rate support. Also, if you use a good ORM tool like NHibernate, it can be configured to use Appfabric (or other distributed cache platforms) as a 2nd level cache. We are leveraging this in our project and getting good results.