Updated: July 16, 2020 (January 29, 2018)

Comparing SQL Server On-Premises with Azure Offerings

Andrew analyzes and writes about Microsoft's data management, business intelligence, and machine learning solutions, as well as aspects of licensing... more

Feature	Description	SQL Server 2017 On-Premises	SQL Server 2017 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-managed SQL Server updates and maintenance	Yes	Yes	Only with managed instance model	No
OS updates	Customer-managed OS updates and maintenance	Yes	Yes	No	No
Physical updates	Customer-managed hardware updates and maintenance	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

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