Azure SQL database Managed Instance is a fully managed SQL Server instance hosted in Azure Cloud with full communication with the company’s LAN and provides most SQL Server 2017 features.

Benefits

SQL Database Managed Instance has plenty of benefits:

Security: SQL Audit, Row Level Security, Always Encrypted, etc.
Programmability : Cross-database queries, Linked Server, CLR modules, etc.
Operational : SQL Agent, DMVs, XEvents, DB Mail, etc.

 Features

For me, the coolest thing is that finally there are features available that previously someone could have only found on an on-premise SQL Server installation. Imagine a SQL Server instance fully isolated and protected in Azure cloud inside your corporate network. It sounds awesome and it truly is .

  • Always Encrypted, (Read More here)
  • Always On Availability Groups, (More about Always On AG, in this link)
  • SQL Server Agent (Read about this feature in this link)
  • SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT)
  • SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)
  • SQL Server Powershell (Read More here)
  • Windows Server Failover Clustering (Read More in Microsoft docs)


Connectivity

For more details about Managed Instance Features, please see the official Microsoft documentation here.

There are three ways a user can access Azure Managed Instance :

  • Deploying a VM inside the same VNet and connect via SSMS.
  • From a remote point, if you deploy a P2S (Point-To-Site) or S2S (Site-To-Site) VPN
  • Connect a Web Application to a Managed Instance using Azure App VNet
Notice: If the VM is in a different VNet, then you need to establish peering between those two VNets.

Managed Instances Deployment Steps

  • VNet Configuration, for more details, check this link
  • Create a Managed Instance, for more details click here.

Pricing Tier

Managed Instance cost is a result of  :  compute cost (vCores) + storage & backup (GBs) + Consumed IOs.

The cost is calculated Hourly or Monthly, the table below shows the prices per General Purpose :

Gen 4 – Intel E5-2673 v3 (Haswell) 2.4 GHz processors    More Details
vCore Memory Included Storage License Included Price Azure Hybrid Benefit Price
8 56 First 32 GB/ month €0.9054/hour /  ~€660.93/month €0.5682/hour (~37%) / ~€414.77/month (~37%)
16 112 First 32 GB/ month €1.8108/hour / ~€1,321.86/month €1.1364/hour (~37%) / ~€829.54/month (~37%)
24 168 First 32 GB/ month €2.7162/hour / ~€1,982.79/month €1.7046/hour (~37%) / ~€1,244.31/month (~37%)
Gen 5 –  Intel E5-2673 v4 (Broadwell) 2.3 GHz processors  More Details
8 44 First 32 GB/ month €0.9054/hour /  ~€660.93/month €0.5682/hour (~37%) / ~€414.77/month (~37%)
16 88 First 32 GB/ month €1.8108/hour / ~€1,321.86/month €1.1364/hour (~37%) / ~€829.54/month (~37%)
24 132 First 32 GB/ month €2.7162/hour / ~€1,982.79/month €1.7046/hour (~37%) / ~€1,244.31/month (~37%)
32 176 First 32 GB/ month €3.6216/hour / ~€2,643.72/month €2.2728/hour (~37%) / ~€1,659.08/month (~37%)
40 264 First 32 GB/ month €4.527/hour / ~€3,304.64/month €2.8409/hour (~37%) / ~€2,073.84/month (~37%)
Storage
Storage Preview Price


First 32 GB/ month  * Included
Additional storage €0.0578/GB
Backup**GB/month €0.0422

 

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