Recommendations on using Azure SQL Database tiers

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Microsoft Azure provides three service tiers for their Azure SQL Databases (Basic, Standard and Premium) according to the provided database size and responsibility. Each tier is further divided into performance levels, see Azure SQL Database Service Tiers and Performance Levels for details.

The following table provides our recommendations for running Kentico databases in Azure SQL.

Project demands

Azure SQL levels

Notes

Projects in development

Basic

The Basic level is suitable only for projects that are not in production and have only very small performance demands.

Read-only projects in production

S2

Only for small Kentico projects.

Larger read/write projects in production

S3 / P1

Large websites with lots of visitors and database requests.

We also recommend that you perform load test when switching to new Azure SQL tier to make sure the database provides satisfactory performance. Choosing performance levels that do not cover your project demands can cause slow database response times and generally low performance.

You can switch between the Service tiers and Performance levels on the Azure Management Portal -> Select your database -> Scale tab.