Everyone that uses Microsoft Azure knows that it has a wide variety of SQL Server-based solutions for hosting your SQL Server databases. These include Azure SQL DB, Azure SQL Managed Instance, and SQL Server running in an Azure Virtual Machine. But when it comes to selecting between those three options, there can be some confusion as to which to pick.
Microsoft has a tool available within the Azure portal that can help you choose between the various options. That tool is the Azure SQL Deployment Chooser (I have no idea if that’s the official name or not, but it is what I’m going with). If you don’t want to keep this blog post handy and instead look for this tool within the Azure portal, you can do this using the search bar at the top of the Azure portal. Simply search for “Azure SQL” (as of this writing in September of the year of Betty White 2022 searching for “SQL” won’t find it) and click on Azure SQL under services (as shown in the image).
This will bring up the Azure SQL Deployment Chooser which shows you all of your Azure SQL services which you have deployed, no matter which features you are using. If you click the “Create” button the create wizard will let you select from the three deployment options so that you can see which options are available along with a description of which service is best for which situation.
Once you select which option you prefer the wizard will take you through the normal wizard for each of those services.
This handy tool will help people that aren’t fully familiar with the Azure SQL options in selecting their database solution.
Denny
