Azure:
Azure is a collection of various service offerings that are hosted in one of Microsoft’s datacenters which provides patching and other maintenance so you have minimized the cost of infrastructure.
Examples of services include custom VMs, websites, virtual private networks, HDInsight, and SQL Server on VM or SQL Database in the cloud.
Azure SQL Database is a relational database-as-a-service (DBaaS).
Microsoft Azure is Microsoft's cloud computing platform, it provides a wide variety of services, without purchasing and upgrading your hardware.
SQL vs Azure:
Azure is SQL Server hosted on the cloud (internet) and maintained by Microsoft.
Means you have transferred all responsibilities for maintaining your servers and updates to Microsoft.
SQL Server is normally refer to as our local databases maintained by an IT department. It happens when data is confidential and you have a large company.
The difference between a SQL Server in azure vs SQL Database is that SQL Server is more Infrastructure as a service (IAAS) v Platform as a service (PAAS).
Azure vs AWS:
Costing: Both Azure and AWS Pricing models offer pay as you go structure. AWS charges on hourly basis whereas Azure charges on per minute basis.
Storage:
Storage:
Both AWS and Azure provide long-running and reliable storage services.
The advantages of Microsoft Azure :
•It is a cost-effective solution for an IT budget
•Microsoft claims that the major advantage of SQL Azure provides is less maintenance.
•Microsoft Azure offers high availability and scalability
•Advanced security
•Easy-to-Use Migration Tools.
The drawbacks of Microsoft Azure :
• Lack of Hyper-V Snapshot Support
• Inability to Upload Custom Images
• Provisioning Virtual Machines in the Cloud takes longer than On-Premise
• Lack of Integrated Backup
• Poor Management GUI and Tools