Microsoft has announced increased read and write performance in Azure SQL Database. The company took to the Azure blog to reveal it has doubled write performance and doubled read performance within Premium databases. The good news for customers is that Microsoft says the upgrades are completely free of change.
Also, the increased performance is rolling out to Azure SQL Database customers around the world. Because of this addition, Microsoft says users can now manage more intensive workloads. By doubling capabilities, the company is also making the platform a more cost-effective solution.
In the blog post, the Microsoft points to the benefits increased read and write performance will have on heavy OLTP workloads. These are the workloads that have random read patterns, and they could now even move into smaller performance tiers.
“In general, if your Premium workload is below 50% DTU utilization now, you may be able to run in the next lower Premium performance level,” Microsoft explains.
Customers using bulk inserts will also see a difference from enhanced performance. For example, the improved speed with benefit index maintenance operations and heavy batched data manipulation. Microsoft adds “You may notice up to double the logical insert throughput or 1/2 of the previous response times.”
Recent Azure SQL Database Changes
Last month, Microsoft closed the year by releasing the Community Technical Preview 1 of the Management Pack. The most notable feature of this update was support for elastic pools. A week earlier, the company had launched more elastic pool choices in SQL Database, allowing for pools of a smaller size.
Microsoft has introduced Backup Retention improvements to the platform recently. Now the database supports up to 10 years of backup data. Long-term retention is now available as a setting control in SQL Database. Retention periods can be selected from 35 days to as much as 10 years.
Temporal Tables were also recently added to Azure SQL Database. The service allows customers to track their data history easily.