Introducing instance pools in SQL Managed Instance

Instance pools in SQL Managed Instance is a new deployment option and it's currently in the public preview phase. Instance pools allow you to run small compute managed instances in a pre-provisioned compute pool. This is a more cost-effective and convenient way of migrating small SQL Server instances to a managed instance.

Instance pools allow you to provision 2 vCore instances inside a pre-provisioned pool. If you have provisioned an 8 vCore instance pool, you can deploy four 2 vCore SQL managed instances in that pool. Prior to instance pools being available, smaller instance databases needed to be consolidated during migration to the cloud, which required careful capacity planning, resource governance, and security considerations.

Figure 8.23 shows a high-level overview of an instance pool and a managed instance deployed within a virtual network subnet:

Figure 8.23: High-level overview of an...