How to Get Azure SQL Storage Costs Under Control

• Costs of Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance can be significantly affected by customer storage, backup, and replica choices.
• Storage costs can exceed compute costs unexpectedly if customers deploy over-aggressively.
• Customers should monitor storage usage and deploy accordingly to prevent unnecessary spending.

Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance, which are Azure’s PaaS database offerings based on SQL Server, offer several tiers and performance levels. The services are designed for different workloads but have many similarities, including storage options for the primary database, backups, and replicas. (For a comparison of the storage capacities and limits of the services, see the chart “Comparing Azure SQL PaaS Storage Types and Limits.”)

Selecting Storage: A Checklist

Deploying a SQL database involves selecting a database size and configuring components such as backups and replicas to ensure the database remains available and can recover from a disaster. Azure SQL PaaS deployments are similar to traditional SQL Server database deployments, especially in the use of storage-related activities, and they include the following storage-related components: