Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance enables the deployment of Azure SQL Managed Instance anywhere. Microsoft promises to deliver this service with total compatibility with Azure SQL MI and SQL Server database and integrated management capabilities. There are currently two pricing tiers available.
Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance General Purpose
Arc-enabled SQL MI General Purpose (GP) provides a single SQL instance to support a multitude of workload scenarios for SQL Server. The GP tier deploys a single pod (cluster of one) Always On Availability Group Cluster, each with four containers located within the pod. Those four containers are listed in the following table.
Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance Business Critical
Arc-enabled SQL MI Business Critical (BC) deploys a three pod (default) Contained availability group cluster, each with four containers located within the pod. These four containers are listed in the following table.
Table 2. Arc-enabled SQL MI containers
arc-sqlmi | Azure SQL Managed Instance executable |
arc-monitor-collectd | Application to collect performance metrics |
arc-monitor-fluentbit | Logging and metrics processing |
arc-ha-supervisor | Azure SQL MI HA monitor for bridging between Arc-enabled SQL MI and and Kubernetes cluster |
Applications can also benefit from read scale-out to offload read-intensive workloads to secondary replicas.
During our lab testing, a contained availability group with three replicas was deployed in minutes, which included all the internal load balancer and read-only synchronous configuration replicas, all with just a few lines of Azure CLI code. This very minimal amount of full deployment time has never been possible with any traditional Azure SQL MI deployment on any Windows or Linux full OS.
Microsoft does recommend a three-replica configuration to achieve near-zero data loss. Reference link.
