Choosing the right storage solution on Azure

Now that we’ve reviewed various storage concepts, let’s examine the Azure storage options available to the cloud solution architect and how they correspond to OLTP, OLAP, and NoSQL.

Azure OLTP services

For OLTP scenarios, we will discuss the following:

• SQL Server on Azure virtual machines
• Azure SQL Managed Instance
• Azure SQL Database

Briefly put, choosing an OLTP service on Azure comes down to deciding on the right SQL option. The level of manageability is a key difference between options, with SQL Server on virtual machines being an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solution, while Azure SQL Managed Instance and Azure SQL Database come as Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions. The differences are captured in Figure 5.4:

Figure 5.4 – The difference in the level of management between the three cloud-based SQL options

As with any IaaS versus PaaS situation, it...