How to Quickly Change Azure SQL Database Service Level Objectives

Sometimes as a DBA, I am lazy and want the ability to execute all of my tasks in one place. Lucky for me I discovered the other day that I can change my Azure SQL Database Service Level Object options within SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) without ever having to go to the Azure Portal. By right clicking on your database properties and choosing the Configure SQL page you can change your Subscription and Azure Location. Even more and what is really cool is I can also scale up and down my Edition (which is generally referred to as Service Tier outside of SSMS), Size and Storage Tiers as well.

You will have to authenticate to Azure the first time you use this.

Once authenticated you will see the below options available.

Depending on your Service Tier such as Basic or Premium, or the more current General Purpose or Business Critical, you have selected your drop will dynamically change for each option. As you can see in the example above it is currently set to Premium, thus I would see only the “P” level objectives (compute and memory levels). However, if I changed my Editions to anything else my Service Level Objective would change accordingly. Azure changes frequently as do the offerings. SSMS is making a call to the SQL resource provider in Azure to get the offerings, so it should always be current, though it may look different than this screenshot. If you notice that the option, you want it not in the dropdown they have given you the ability to simply type the value.

The Max Size will allow you to see your current dataset maximum storage size or scale it up and down when needed. Leaving it blank will set it to the default size for the edition and service level objective.

By clicking ok these changes will be implement and make take a slight downtime (should be minimal) event so be careful. Another thing worth noting is permissions to alter a database per ms docs a login must be either:

• the server-level principal login
• a member of the dbmanager database role in master
• a member of the db_owner database role in the current database, or dbo of the database

If you are GUI averse, you can also script these changes out to T-SQL and run those. For example, this script changes the Service Level Objective (SLO) to a Premium P2.

ALTER DATABASE [YOUR DATABASE] MODIFY (SERVICE_OBJECTIVE = 'P2');

GO

Once again Microsoft has catered to lazy DBAs like me that want everything in one place. This is another one of those things I am grateful to have the ability to do in SSMS.