Microsoft augmented the data warehouse capabilities of Azure platform, with the launch of Compute Optimized Gen2 tier of Azure SQL Data Warehouse (DW) service.
Azure SQL DW is a faster, flexible and secure way to run complex queries across petabytes of data. The Compute Optimized Gen2 tier is the next generation of Azure SQL DW that features major query performance improvements.
According to Microsoft, SQL DW Gen2 supports up to 128 concurrent queries from a single cluster, which is the highest any cloud data warehousing service supports.
It delivers four times more concurrency, which will help the organizations that rely on business intelligence (BI) tools to gain insights into KPIs and business metrics. The existing data warehousing systems put a limit to the number of concurrent queries to be processed. It results in delays in analysis.
Azure SQL DW now offers up to five times better query performance, and five times higher computing power compared to the previous product generation.
It runs on servers that are equipped with a high-speed NVMe flash drives. Microsoft said that the performance improvements in updated SQL DW are powered by adaptive caching technology. This technology recognizes the most frequently used records in an organization and store them on machines to enable rapid access.
“After upgrading to the Gen2 of SQL Data Warehouse, our data warehouse workload has seen an average of 5.4 times performance improvement. This enhancement to the service is phenomenal and helps us deliver key customer insights for our business” said Brent Niezgocki, Senior Software Engineer for the Azure Active Directory analytics team at Microsoft.
Furthermore, Microsoft has added Transparent Data Encryption with customer-managed keys, giving the control over data to customers. It will comprise storage elasticity, allowing customers to store unlimited data in SQL’s columnar format.
Azure SQL DW Compute Optimized Gen2 tier is now generally available in 20 regions including Australia East, Central US, Canada Central, Central India, South India, East Asia, North Europe and South Europe. It will subsequently roll out to all other Azure regions.
