Migrating to Microsoft Azure Database Platforms with SQL Server on Azure VM

Before migrating your database workload to Microsoft Azure, you need to identify which service is suitable to host your databases with the minimal changes required to be performed on the current environment to fit in with the Microsoft Azure database platform.

Microsoft Azure provides two types of database services categories based on the hosting mechanism. The Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and the Platform as a Service (PaaS). To choose between these two platforms you need to specify the level of control that you will take on these services and the level of control you will leave for the cloud service provider.

When you choose IaaS platform, you will rent a virtual machine from Microsoft Azure and take responsibilities of the storage, networking and operating system on these servers, and leave the hardware and hosting control to the provider.

If you already work with SQL Servers that are hosted in your machine or in the company datacenter, then the SQL Server IaaS deployment option will not be something new for you. SQL Server on Azure VM is a normal SQL Server instance that is deployed in a virtual machine hosted in Azure.

With the SQL Server on Azure VM deployment option, you can easily migrate your on-premises SQL Server database to Microsoft Azure SQL Platform with minimal effort.

SQL Server on Azure VM provides you with full control at the SQL server and the operating system levels. You can specify the specs of the VM that will host the SQL Server and the version of the SQL Server that you plan to use. You can easily scale up and down based on your requirements within few minutes without the need to wait for approvals for buying new hardware.

But the tax you will pay for this access is that you will be responsible for maintaining, updating and patching the SQL Server instance and the operating system in that VM. Also, the cost of the SQL Server and operating system licenses is more expensive than the other deployment options