>> Recently, we've added
some new performance improvements to Azure SQL Managed Instance,
and there's only good news related to these.
Learn more in this episode of Data Exposed.
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>> Hi. I'm Anna Hoffman,
and welcome to this episode of Data Exposed.
Today, I'm joined by Vladimir,
a Program Manager on the Azure Data team.
Thanks for joining us today.
>> Hi, Anna. It's a pleasure and a privilege to be here.
Glad to be with you and your audience.
>> We're happy to have you.
Today, we're going to be talking about
some new performance enhancements that are coming
to Azure SQL Managed Instance.
I really just want to toss it over to you, Vladimir,
and understand what did we announce,
and can you share any details related to it?
>> My pleasure. I have a couple of slides that I've prepared.
Let's switch to the slides.
Essentially, Azure SQL Managed Instance
has been around for a couple of years.
But in this recent period,
we've shipped a number of performance improvements that together
compound to a huge boost in Azure SQL MI performance.
We have significantly improved the transaction log write
throughput for both general purpose
and business critical instances.
Then we've also improved
the data and log IOPS for business critical.
We've improved the performance predictability
for general purpose instances,
and then we've also done work to improve the tempdb performance.
All these, taken together,
essentially, create a major breakthrough,
a major boost to the performance of Azure SQL MI.
Now, in terms of more details,
here's what this means.
The log rates or the transaction log write
throughput for SQL MI general purpose instances
has been significantly improved.
The previous limit in place was
22 megs per second for the whole instance,
now, the per-instance maximum is at 120 megs per seconds,
so more than 5x improvement.
There's the additional caveat of that you cannot
realize the full 120 megs per second with
just one database because there's
a per database limit depending on the size of the log file.
Then there's details in the table below.
But essentially, you need
a two-terabyte log file in order to get to the full maximum,
65 megs per second for database.
This is a major, major improvement,
so more than 3x per db and 5x for the whole instance.
For the business critical instances,
the limit went up from 48 megs per
second to 96 megs per second for log rates.
But we've also managed to improve the IOPS,
the IO operations per second from 2.5K to 4K,
so 60 percent net improvement in the IOPS category as well.
How this looks is like this.
Again, major improvements coming
to both general purpose and business critical.
Now, what this means to your workload
is depends on the workload for sure.
But we've done extensive testing here with
the engineering team and we've seen improvements anyways
from up to 2x to more than
4x in transactional throughput for different kinds of workloads.
Again, most workloads benefiting 2x or more.
This is all I had in terms of the slides.
>> Awesome. Thanks, Vladimir. This seems like
some significant improvements as far as performance goes.
I got to ask, there's got to be some sort of
pricing implication that customers now need to be aware of.
Can you talk more about that?
>> Yeah. That's a great question.
I have some fabulous news to share because
all these fantastic improvements are
made available with no additional cost.
Essentially, we've upgraded the horsepower of
the SQL MI engine for no extra charge to the customers,
so there are no pricing implications
for these improvements at all.
>> Wow, that's awesome news.
They're getting new improvements at no cost.
>> I love my car manufacturer to do
the same kind of upgrade for me as well,
if it were possible, right?
>> Yeah. Exactly. What are some things
that customers can now do
because of some of these performance improvements?
>> Well, essentially to leverage the same analogy,
given that SQL MI has more horsepower, more muscle,
there's an opportunity now to migrate more performance-demanding,
performance-hungry workloads to Azure.
Essentially, SQL MI will be able to take on
larger and more complex workloads compared to
what used to be the case only a month or so ago.
>> Awesome. Cool. Now, I'm assuming that this
applies for, obviously, any new Azure SQL Managed Instances.
But if I have a current Managed Instance,
do I need to migrate?
Do I need to turn this thing on?
How do I start to take advantage of these improvements?
>> Well, I have more good news.
We've made these improvements automatically available for all
existing and new Managed Instances starting sometime mid-September.
Essentially, by the time your viewers get to see this,
their instances will very likely already be
upgraded to the new and improved performance limits.
>> Awesome. What I'm hearing is starting in mid-September,
I'm not going to have to pay anything extra.
I'm not going to have to change anything.
I'm just going to start running faster,
which is awesome news.
>> You're going to wake up one day and your instance just
became faster for no extra cost. Exactly.
>> That's awesome.
>> It sounds like magic.
>> Yeah, just like magic.
This is going to make a lot of our customers
and viewers very excited.
Vladimir, thanks so much for coming on
the show and sharing this information with us.
We're going to put some links in the description to learn
more if you want to see exactly what's being improved,
and we really hope to see you next time on Data Exposed.
>> Thanks, Anna, for having me. Nice to be here and I
hope to see you again in the near future. Bye.
>> Awesome. Thanks.
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