Azure SQL Server Database serverless or Elastic pool

Question

I'm just getting started with Azure SQL Database and have some questions about pricing. I currently have about 7 databases in use with a free student subscription plan for a development environment. Most of the databases are only used occasionally when needed. I'm wondering if I should use Elastic Pools to share resources among these databases to save costs and resources, or if I should opt for serverless computing to turn off databases when they are not in use. Thank you

Answer 1

Hi ,

Yes, an elastic pool vCore provisioned server can be paused. You can do this by changing the compute tier of the elastic pool to Serverless. In the serverless compute tier, the database is automatically paused when it is inactive for a period of time that you specify. The database is automatically resumed when the next login or other activity occurs.

To change the compute tier of an elastic pool, you can follow these steps:

1. Go to the Azure portal and sign in to your account.
2. Select the Azure SQL resource that contains the elastic pool.
3. In the left navigation menu, select Elastic Pools.
4. Select the elastic pool that you want to change the compute tier for.
5. In the Settings section, select Compute Tier.
6. Select Serverless.
7. Click Save.

Once you have changed the compute tier to serverless, the database will be paused after the idle time that you specified. You can view the idle time in the Auto-pause delay setting. Here are some things to keep in mind:

• When a database is paused in the serverless compute tier, you will not be charged for the compute resources. However, you will still be charged for the storage resources that are used by the database.
• The database will be automatically resumed when the next login or other activity occurs.
• If you want to prevent the database from being paused, you can disable auto-pause. To do this, set the Auto-pause delay setting to 0.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.