Updated: July 16, 2020 (March 6, 2017)

Comparing SQL Server Features On-Premises with Azure Offerings

Before joining Directions on Microsoft, Rob worked at Microsoft for 14 years where he designed technologies for Microsoft products and... more

Feature	Description	SQL Server 2016 On-Premises	SQL Server 2016 in Azure VMs	Azure SQL Database	Azure SQL Data Warehouse
Tenancy	The location and hosting environment	Customer premises	Microsoft data center (multitenant VM hosting)	Microsoft data center (multitenant hosted platform)	Microsoft data center (multitenant hosted platform)
Product updates	Customer performs SQL Server updates	Yes	Yes	No	No
OS updates	Customer performs OS updates	Yes	Yes	No	No
Physical updates	Customer performs hardware updates	Yes	No	No	No
Performance scaling	Scaling technique to increase performance to address workload demands	Scale up to higher spec hardware	Scale up to higher performing VM	Scale up to higher tier and performance level	Scale compute and storage resources independently
Max database size	Maximum

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