Microsoft’s SQL Server 2022 is all about Azure • TechCrunch

Microsoft immediately launched SQL Server 2022, the most recent model of its database software program, which initially launched greater than 33 years in the past. Microsoft describes this launch because the “most Azure-enabled launch of SQL Server but” and with connections to Azure Synapse Hyperlink for enabling real-time analytics over the database, Azure Purview for knowledge governance and catastrophe restoration with the assistance of Azure SQL Managed Occasion, this launch is, in some ways, the fruits of the cloud-connection groundwork the staff began fairly just a few years in the past.

“From the very starting, the imaginative and prescient [for SQL Server] actually was about — databases had been very advanced — how do you make that very simple? And in some ways, I believe that has been a key motive why it lasted for thus lengthy and the way we’ve developed it as effectively,” Ran Kumar, Microsoft’s company VP for Azure Information, informed me. “One of many large issues that I take into consideration with SQL Server 2022 is that we’ve made it fully cloud-connected to Azure.”

He famous that whereas the migration of on-prem workloads is going on, Microsoft’s prospects are all shifting at very completely different speeds and a few, for a mess of causes, might by no means transfer to the cloud in any respect. That, he argues, is why the corporate all the time guess on a hybrid strategy, however it is usually why a number of prospects began asking about how they may get the worth of being within the cloud with out truly having to maneuver all of their knowledge to it. “That was actually the important thing thesis of why we invested in making this right into a cloud launch,” Kumar mentioned.

A great instance right here is the brand new catastrophe restoration operate that enables customers to copy their knowledge in SQL Managed Occasion on Azure and use that as a backup for his or her important on-premises SQL Server, which ought to make it simple to fail over to that when the principle server goes down.

Kumar additionally famous that with Synapse Hyperlink, SQL Server customers can now run real-time analytics over their database with out having to arrange a fancy infrastructure. “All it is advisable to do is test a field and say: ‘replicate this knowledge in close to actual time.’ It lands it into Synapse and you’ll have your Energy BI report that’s studying that knowledge and that entire pipeline is simply constructed for you,” he mentioned.

And for corporations that do certainly have a hybrid setup, assist for the Purview knowledge governance service now allows them to set their insurance policies, irrespective of whether or not the information resides in SQL Server within the cloud or on premises.

Along with the work on the brand new cloud-connected capabilities, the staff additionally, after all, labored on bettering the database’s general efficiency, stability and safety posture. On the core of that work, not less than for this launch, was the database’s clever question processing engine, which might now optimize queries in a variety of extra advanced situations, for instance.

Additionally fascinating is a brand new pay-as-you-go billing mannequin for SQL server via Azure Arc, Microsoft’s platform for managing cloud and on-premises sources. Utilizing a connection to Azure Arc, which is a part of the SQL Server 2022 setup course of, on-premises customers can now additionally go for cloud-enabled billing to handle consumption spikes or for advert hoc use circumstances.

As Kumar famous, SQL Server utilization, regardless of all the competitors accessible immediately, continues to develop (although partially, that’s pushed by present prospects increasing their utilization).

The brand new version of SQL Server is now usually accessible, together with the free Developer and Categorical editions.