Serverless Gets Faster

When the Azure SQL Database serverless option was introduced, I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't get the database to pause any sooner than 1 hour. That meant I needed to ensure clients didn't access the system for an hour, but also, that I burned an hour of compute after the last access.

Recently I saw an announcement that this time frame has come down to 15 minutes. While this might seem like a very simple change from a technical standpoint (just alter a timer option), I'm sure there was more work needed. I'm also sure there was a lot of debate on the sales/marketing side to decide if this would lose a lot of revenue.

I'm sure this costs Azure some compute revenue in the short term, but it might also create opportunities from customers who consider using this in new situations since it can shut down quickly. I certainly think this makes the use of an Azure SQL database for QA/staging type work more attractive. This might also get more people to take a look at serverless and realize the auto-scale benefits are pretty cool.

My request would be to drop this down to 5 minutes and increase the range of auto-scale as well. Maybe allow me to go from 2-16 vCores if needed with corresponding memory jumps. I don't know I need this by the minute, but I would like to have things shut down fairly quickly if we stop a workload and aren't using the system.

I'd also like a better retry on startup other than trapping an error on the client and re-sending my request to connect. It's just embarrassing that we still have that happening for a cloud PaaS service.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Join the debate, and respond to the editorial on the forums

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