SQL Azure Federation pricing impacts

Question

Hopefully, I'm just missing something here. How will the upcoming federation support impact the pricing of Sql Azure? In other words, if I create a federation that truly is "web-scale", can I store ~1 - 5 TB across the federation? If so, how is this billed? My confusion is based on the fact that the largest SQL Azure billable size is 50GB.

Thoughts?

TIA!

Answer 1

Hi There federations does not change much about how we bill. With federations, you can create large scale databases that span multiple federation members. Each federation member is a sql azure database and can be controlled with the same SKU model you have today (web or business). You can choose to heavily distribute to small 1GB web editions or choose to consolidate into large 50GB business editions. Obviously you are not locked into any distribution of data and you can redistribute your data and repartition with SPLIT any time and change the SKU of the members. In SQL Azure, you get billed on the collection of all databases you use in the system prorated to a day. In the case of federations, the same logic apply; the cost of the federation is the collection of its federation members.

Hope this helps.

-Cihan Biyikoglu - program manager - sql azure

Answer 2

So I assume that for a federated database, the base-case is that you'd be paying for at least 2 databases... the root db, and the initial member db. Is that correct?

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Chris

Answer 3

Yes Chris, that is correct. When you create a federation, you are creating the first federation member as well so you are at that point paying for 2 databases.

There is more information on this blog post I did about the pricing details of federations; http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cbiyikoglu/archive/2011/12/12/billing-model-for-federations-in-sql-azure-explained.aspx

Thanks

Cihan Biyikoglu