Azure SQL Hyperscale is a new database as a service (DBaaS) offering from Microsoft. Microsoft built Azure SQL Hyperscale on the experiences learned by Microsoft Azure SQL Database. Azure SQL Hyperscale strives for improvements in security and availability plus lower and more flexible cost, and higher performance.

Azure SQL Hyperscale is based on the idea of separating compute and storage that other vendors such as Amazon and Oracle have modeled products on.. However, Azure SQL Hyperscale architecture also separates durability and availability. That separation helps meet a customer need for the balancing of cost, performance, and availability.

Microsoft has released a single database version of Azure SQL Hyperscale. However, Microsoft is working on future improvements for bulk operations, multiple-master variants, better support for the hybrid transaction / analytical processing (HTAP) as can be found in MariaDB, and making use of the Log Service for other services such as audit and security.

Azure SQL Hyperscale is designed to be able to migrate from Azure SQL Databases. And Azure SQL Hyperscale is intended to have no impact on current applications and tools designed for Azure SQL Databases. The lack of adverse effects is good news for third-party vendors, including IDERA.

This whitepaper presents the design goals, the performance comparison, the SQL Server features used, the architectural overview, and the configuration of Azure SQL Hyperscale.