
Azure Database for MySQL and PostgreSQL - willyyr
https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/10/microsoft-launches-azure-database-for-mysql-and-postgressql/
======
sbuttgereit
What looks compelling about the PostgreSQL offering as compared to AWS RDS is
that it looks like you get a PostgreSQL cluster rather than a single database
in a shared cluster. At least reading the documentation for creating a DB
implies that ([https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/azure/postgresql/quickstart...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/azure/postgresql/quickstart-create-server-database-azure-cli)).

For me, it might remove some blockers to moving some clients to a cloud
managed database solution that had always been there with AWS RDS. If that
follows through and pays off for having a proper PostgreSQL super user in the
database environment available for use (what I really want), that can make
certain things much more do-able (brings new things you have to watch out for,
too, but... pick your battles).

~~~
sciolistse
macieksarnowicz is shadowbanned for whatever reason, but he answered:

Thank you for your feedback. We indeed offer a whole server (database cluster)
and you can create multiple databases in it and have full control of the
resources allocated to that cluster.

The admin user provisioned for the server is not a full superuser, but it is
close to that. We are trying to find the right set of permissions to provide
to our customers without jeopardizing our ability to manage this server for
you. Please submit your feedback here:
[https://feedback.azure.com/forums/597976-azure-database-
for-...](https://feedback.azure.com/forums/597976-azure-database-for-
postgresql) if you see a problem with the permissions.

~~~
zoloateff
is this fully managed autoscale like cloud datastore?

~~~
macieksarnowicz
We do not support automatic autoscale at this point, but it is definitely a
feature we will be considering in the future. For now, you can scale on-demand
in the portal or using Azure CLI.

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sandGorgon
Unfortunately, still not available in the India datacenter.

This is going to be huge in India. Microsoft has massive mindshare in India
with the govt because of the regulatory landscape.

I have it on firsthand info that several banks in India are going to make
their _first ever_ transition to the cloud on Azure because of Microsoft's
willingness to go the extra mile around whatever security dances that the
banks want them to do.

Plus Azure has India datacenter which takes of the PII problem for healthcare
and financial data.

It is truly unfortunate that the management console has the worst UX ever.

~~~
tracker1
> It is truly unfortunate that the management console has the worst UX ever.

I think that title goes to AWS...

~~~
sandGorgon
I think you have not suffered Azure then. You will cry in relief when you are
allowed to go back to AWS UI.

The information architecture is fairly broken. And the UI that slides is even
worse - the only reason a UI like that exists because it's highly stateful:
you need to remember what you did in the previous screen. And with the whole
information architecture, it's crazy hard.

If Azure builds a Google cloud like UI and calls it azure-lite, I would throw
all my money at them.

~~~
tracker1
Fair enough.. I still consider AWS worse than Azure, and yeah, I've used
both.. only dipped my toes into Google's but so far it's been better than
either... however, if you're automating, it makes much less difference.

------
caleblloyd
Microsoft azure product links for those looking:

MySQL: [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-
us/services/mysql/](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/mysql/)

PostgreSQL: [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-
us/services/postgresql/](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-
us/services/postgresql/)

------
pianoben
Better late than never - this is a welcome alternative to Amazon's RDS support
for postgresql, the lack of which has been the primary reason I've kept
personal workloads off of Azure. I'm excited to take this for a spin!

Azure SQL Server has been great at work; operationally, it couldn't be
simpler, and the point-in-time restore feature saved our bacon at least once.
The only drawback has been... SQL Server itself. It's a solid performer, but
T-SQL is a bear to work with. If MSFT can apply the same operations magic to
postgres, they'll have a real winner on their hands.

~~~
rattray
Just curious, do you use .NET at work? If so, does it work well with Postgres?
(eg; EntityFramework smoothness)

~~~
bpicolo
I just started trying out pgsql with entityframework core the other day via
[http://www.npgsql.org/](http://www.npgsql.org/).

Super easy to set up and get working with. I've never used EF6 , so I can't
really comment there, but I've seen mention that entity framework core is
missing features relative to ef6, so that's something to think about.

Dealing with not-builtin types like jsonp/hstore is a bit tricky in EF so far
it feels like, but doable? Doesn't seem like you can get a real first class
experience with that yet though.

~~~
ahoka
We use jsonb with ef core. Just use a string property with
Column(TypeName="jsonb") and deserialize with newtonsoft. I think you could
use raw queries to do some advanced stuff.

~~~
bpicolo
Yeah, that's what I'm doing atm in a new project :) I just wish I could make
it a JToken or whatever and give EF a db serializer. Can do similar with
getters / setters I guess?

------
yilu331
Please add/vote what are most critical PostgreSQL extensions you want to have
in Azure Database for PostgreSQL.
[https://feedback.azure.com/forums/597976-azure-database-
for-...](https://feedback.azure.com/forums/597976-azure-database-for-
postgresql)

------
philliphaydon
This is absolutely great news.

Just a word of warning, plv8 extension isn't available in the preview:

[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/azure/postgresql/concepts-e...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/azure/postgresql/concepts-extensions)

Apart from the lack of that extension, ah so exciting. <3 PostgreSQL.

~~~
meetbhagdev
Loving the excitement! We are actively reviewing feedback in the public
preview. Make sure you record your feedback here:
[https://feedback.azure.com/forums/597976-azure-database-
for-...](https://feedback.azure.com/forums/597976-azure-database-for-
postgresql) :)

~~~
philliphaydon
Submitted. :)

[https://feedback.azure.com/forums/597976-azure-database-
for-...](https://feedback.azure.com/forums/597976-azure-database-for-
postgresql/suggestions/19232863-plv8-extension)

------
justinclift
Wow. If someone had suggested this would happen last year, I would have said
pigs would fly first.

/me looks outside for flying pigs. Yep, there they are, whole groups of them
going by in formation. ;)

~~~
niklasrde
Well, this happened today at work:
[http://imgur.com/AsezmPp](http://imgur.com/AsezmPp)

------
insulanian
RDS was the main reason I stuck with AWS all this time. Happy to see MS
recognizing that PostgreSQL is very much preferred these days.

------
abrookewood
Just a word of caution: be very careful to check the latency between the DB
tier and the VM tier.

We had to abandon a multi-month deployment to Azure because the latency was
too high and it caused all sorts of issues with our app. To be honest, our DB
access approach wasn't great (heaps of really small requests), but we couldn't
re-architect it in the timeframe we had. We were also doing this in Sydney, so
maybe it was just a localised issue (the Australian data centres are
relatively new).

Anyway, hopefully they have that sorted - we need more competition!

------
rattray
Honestly, I'm flat-out impressed by what I'm seeing from Azure these days.

~~~
SaloniSonpal
:-)

------
kamathsun
Please read my blog about Azure Database for PostgreSQL here
-[https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-azure-
data...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-azure-database-for-
postgresql-preview/) / _I work at Microsoft on the managed PostgreSQL service_
/

------
gressquel
great stuff from Microsoft this. Now people can run Wordpress on azure
withouth install mysql on a seperate instance.

~~~
partiallypro
It seems it's still better to run mySQL on a VM if you're running multiple
databases for smaller sites. But for single sites that need to scale, it's way
better than ClearDB, which is hot garbage if you ask me.

~~~
lima
Why?

~~~
partiallypro
If you're asking why I think it's still better to run a VM for multiple
databases, my answer is pricing.

If you're asking why I think ClearDB is hot garbage, it's because of pricing,
in ability to scale down (you literally cannot scale down ClearDB in Azure),
connection limits on the DB that make no sense with the pricing, etc.

------
barking
"Azure Database for PostgreSQL"

Postgresql database for Azure?

~~~
kalmi10
No, this is a PaaS offering that includes high-availability, fault-tolerance
and disaster recovery, and uses a customized version of PostgreSQL behind the
scenes.

~~~
kamathsun
We are using community edition of PostgreSQL and the same PostgreSQL we all
love. / _works at Microsoft and the PostgreSQL managed service_ /

~~~
meetbhagdev
+1

------
shontnew
Here are the pricing links

[https://azure.microsoft.com/en-
us/pricing/details/postgresql...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-
us/pricing/details/postgresql/)

[https://azure.microsoft.com/en-
us/pricing/details/mysql/](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-
us/pricing/details/mysql/)

------
lmickh
So is a "compute unit" the same as the "Azure Compute Units" that are used to
measure VMs? 800 ACU roughly comes out to 4 cores. At $0.78/hr, that is hardly
comparable to the RDS offerings. Didn't see an indication of memory.

Much like SQL Server DTUs and DWUs, the spacebucks measurements only seem to
useful for hiding the actual price comparisons.

At least they stopped the DTU/DWU non-sense for these services.

~~~
kamathsun
Compute units are a measure of computing throughput for your instance with
pre-configured amount of RAM. We do not count hyperthreads as core. So 100
compute units is 1 core, 200 compute units is 2 cores, etc. / _works at
Microsoft and managed PostgreSQL service_ /

~~~
karmelapple
Does it say what the pre-configured amount of RAM is?

Also, does it talk about what level of admin rights I can get to these
machines?

------
tlear
Nice, starting new project and this looks like the way to go for us. Postgres
<3 Need to check if available in Japan yet

~~~
kamathsun
We are in Azure Japan East and Japan West regions today! / _works at Microsoft
and managed PostgreSQL service_ /

------
ankushio
The landing page says "With Azure Database for PostgreSQL, you can scale the
performance of your database with no application downtime". I don't see an
option to scale the Postgres database in my Azure Portal.

Is this feature not available yet?

~~~
kamathsun
You can scale by clicking on the Pricing tier. However note that scaling
operations currently only support within a service tier. i.e, scaling up/down
within Basic and scaling up/down within standard. Ability to scale across
service tiers will come soon. / _works at Microsoft and the managed PostgreSQL
service_ /

~~~
ankushio
I tried out this feature in the Basic tier, but my I see downtime during the
scaling up of the instance.

I opened a psql console and ran "BEGIN; SELECT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP; SELECT
pg_sleep(200); SELECT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP; COMMIT;"

I see the error "server closed the connection unexpectedly"

~~~
kamathsun
The application should have logic to re-try connections. When you scale, there
is a brief moment ~30-45seconds when the app wont be able to connect to the
database and then resumes if you re-try connection. / _I work at Microsoft on
the managed PostgreSQL service_ /

~~~
martinknafve
How do you accomplish no application downtime if for 45 seconds you can't
connect to the database?

In background processes you might get away with retrying connections for a
minute but most users will probably consider your site broken if page load
time is 45 seconds.

------
phlai
Its exciting to see Azure grow its offering to compete Amazon and Google.

------
kaeshiwaza
A quick try show me that it's very very slow... Like 1s for a very simple
query on a quite small database. I tried from a scaleway server (in France).

------
denois
Good news. AWS is way too complex for startups. Azure is much simpler and
don't require a separate DevOps department :D

~~~
philliphaydon
How is AWS complicated? I struggle more with Azure than I do with AWS. And
I've used Azure more than I've used AWS...

------
kaeshiwaza
Is it possible to create a replicate user and then replicate to a local server
?

