What are Azure Cloud and the benefits of Using Azure cloud?
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform of Microsoft used for multiple could services such as analytics, computing, networking, and storage. However, Azure cloud platform comes with over 200 products to help businesses manage their data and business challenges. Also, A lot of businesses use Azure Data Factory or Azure SQL database as their cloud database service provider as it is secure and scalable. Let’s discuss some of the main features and values Azure SQL database can provide to a business.
Benefits of Azure SQL Database
Azure SQL Database provides a variety of features to cater to all business requirements.
Reliability:
Azure SQL database guarantees virtually zero downtime for any amounts of data it hosts. It’s their stated goal to be available 99.99% of the time. However, This reliant and highly available architecture secures the data against any failures and minimizes the need for constant maintenance. Microsoft lets its users plan their maintenance events as well.
Durability and Backup options:
The Azure SQL Database comes with 2 backup database storage options
- Point in time Restores: It allows you to save the dynamically sized history of your database and you can configure the retention period. In case of any failure, it will allow you to access a full version of your database as far as a month back.
- Long-term retention: This option lets you store backups of your database for periods over 5-10 years or more.
Integration with Microsoft Ecosystem:
Azure SQL database can integrated directly with any other Microsoft tools and platforms such as Azure data factory; Azure portal, SQL Server Management Studio, and more. Also, Azure SQL database can also integrated with open-source tools like Hadoop as well.
Super Scalability:
Azure SQL database allows both horizontal as well as vertical scalability. The user can scale up to increase performance by switching to a premium model. Users can also scale out by adding the number of database units to make database management faster
Next-gen security:
Microsoft has been an industry leader for a long and is committed to a high level of trust; transparency, and security. Also, Azure SQL database is equipped with protective systems that keep your information secure; from network level all the way to individual table rows. It even enables the users to create customized firewalls that will let them control unauthorized traffic; set authentication rules, prevent thefts, and allow access to only authorized personnel.
What does your IT team need to do?
Organizations and enterprises often find themselves juggling massive volumes of data; and it’s a challenging task for the IT teams to load that data into a central repository for further data processing. To ensure performance and efficiency; they must be able to load their data quickly, cheaply; and safely through an ETL process into their databases like Azure SQL database. Tools like Astera Centerprise are designed to automate the whole ETL process of Azure ETL to ensure you can load your data from disparate sources onto your Azure cloud databases. Azure ETL can really boost the IT team’s productivity and efficiency while lowering the process downtime.
