Azure SQL Database Hyperscale – lower, simplified pricing!

[Arvind_Shyamsundar]

Azure is a cloud platform designed to simplify building powerful and economical modern applications. Azure SQL Database Hyperscale is a leading relational database service offering for cloud-born applications. In addition to a rock-solid relational database foundation, Hyperscale offers several exciting modern developer features like REST and GraphQL endpoints, JSON data support, external API invocation.

Hyperscale was built leveraging core cloud capabilities and offers auto-scaling, multi-tiered high performance storage, independently scalable compute, read scale-out, predictable, and quick operations like database copy, and much more! We want to ensure that all customers use Hyperscale for their application – no matter what size.

Today, we're excited to announce changes to the way Hyperscale is priced. In most cases, you will see significantly lower costs – allowing you to invest the resultant savings in the resources you need to build AI-ready applications, increase the resiliency of your databases, and many other benefits unique to Hyperscale. Let’s take a deeper look at this exciting announcement!

What is changing?

We are reducing the price of compute by $0.10 USD per vCore per hour (some exceptions are listed later in this post), which in many cases can be up to 35% less than the pre-announcement (“current rate”) compute cost. The storage cost for Hyperscale has also been aligned with the market for developer databases and the pricing for other Azure Database offerings, while not charging for I/O operations.

The new pricing will take effect and be displayed on the Azure SQL Database pricing page and Azure pricing calculator on December 15th.

Examples of the pricing change

Here are some examples to illustrate how the new pricing works as compared to the existing pricing. Note that all costs are estimated and assume a 730 hour month.

Case 1: Hyperscale single DB with 6-vCore provisioned compute, 0 HA replica and 50 GB of allocated storage, East US

	Existing pricing	New pricing
Compute cost	USD 1237.85	USD 800.05
Storage cost	USD 5.0	USD 12.5
Total cost	USD 1242.9	USD 812.55, saving 35%

Case 2: Hyperscale single DB with 12-vCore provisioned compute, 1 HA replica and 200 GB of allocated storage, East US

	Existing pricing	New pricing
Compute cost	USD 4075.9	USD 3200.20
Storage cost	USD 20.0	USD 50.0
Total cost	USD 4095.9	USD 3250.20, saving 21%

Case 3: Hyperscale single DB with 32-vCore provisioned compute, 1 HA replica and 18 TB of allocated storage, East US

	Existing pricing	New pricing
Compute cost	USD 10869.08	USD 8533.88
Storage cost	USD 1,843.20	USD 4,608.00
Total cost	USD 12712.28	USD 13141.88, 3% higher

 

Conclusion

In conclusion, these pricing changes for Hyperscale are aligned with our mission to provide the best features, with the highest performance and scalability, at a great price for all our customers. Our team is here to assist with any questions you may have about these changes. Please leave a comment on this blog and we’ll be happy to get back to you. Alternatively, you can also email us at sqlhsfeedback AT microsoft DOT com. We are eager to hear from you all!

Frequently Asked Questions

When does the change take effect, and what does it impact?

The pricing changes take effect on December 15^th, 2023 at 00:00 hours UTC. The changes will apply to the following resources created on or after Dec 15^th, 2023.

1. Any newly created Hyperscale single provisioned compute databases.
2. Any (existing or new) Hyperscale single serverless databases (currently in preview).
3. Any (existing or new) Hyperscale elastic pools (currently in preview).
4. Any newly created Hyperscale elastic pooled databases (currently in preview).

What happens to my existing Hyperscale resources?

To start with, nothing changes till December 15^th, 2023. Here’s what will happen starting December 15^th, 2023:

1. To provide a seamless experience without any impact on existing workloads, all existing Hyperscale single databases with provisioned compute created before December 15^th, 2023, will continue to be billed at the existing rates, for a period of up to 3 years (ending December 14^th, 2026). Customers will receive further notice of the pricing change to their Hyperscale databases in advance of December 14^th, 2026.
2. All existing Hyperscale single databases with serverless compute (currently in preview) will automatically switch to the new pricing starting December 15^th, 2023.
3. All existing Hyperscale elastic pools (currently in preview) will automatically switch to the new pricing starting December 15^th, 2023.

What if I update / change a database to a different deployment option?

Hyperscale allows seamless, rapid scaling of the database compute. You can also scale a Hyperscale database to move from provisioned compute to serverless compute (or the other way around). You can add an existing Hyperscale database to an elastic pool or move an elastic pooled database out of the elastic pool to a single database. Here’s how your costs are impacted if you perform any of these changes on or after December 15^th, 2023:

Change	Impact
Hyperscale (serverless single, or elastic pooled) database is changed to a Hyperscale single database with provisioned compute.	The final cost of the database will be based on when the database was created. If the database was created prior to December 15th, 2023, it will be billed as per the existing pricing. If the database was created on or after December 15th, 2023, it will be billed as per the new pricing.
Hyperscale database is changed to a Hyperscale single database with serverless compute.	The database will be billed with the new pricing.
Hyperscale database is added to an elastic pool on or after December 15th.	The database’s storage will be charged as per the “new” storage pricing. There is no separate compute cost for a database in an elastic pool.
Hyperscale single database is scaled up, or down, or has high-availability replicas added or removed, or its hardware family is changed.	The pricing model remains as it was before the scaling operation. Of course, the actual costs will change based on the scaling operation.
Any copies of a Hyperscale database created as a Hyperscale single database, on or after December 15th, 2023.	The database copies will use the new pricing, regardless of when the original database was created.
Any new single database created via. restore, or geo-replication operations, on or after December 15th, 2023.	The new database will use the new pricing, regardless of when the original database was created.
Any non-Hyperscale database is updated to Hyperscale on or after December 15th, 2023.	The new database will use the new pricing, regardless of when it was originally created.

See the summarized tables below for a quick reference.

Single databases

	Hyperscale single databases with provisioned compute			Hyperscale single databases with serverless compute
	Timeline: before December 15th, 2023	Timeline: on or after December 15th, 2023		Timeline: before December 15th, 2023	Timeline: on or after December 15th, 2023
		Database was created or migrated to Hyperscale before December 15th, 2023	Database created or migrated to Hyperscale after December 15th, 2023		Database was created or migrated to Hyperscale before December 15th, 2023	Database created or migrated to Hyperscale after December 15th, 2023
Compute	Existing provisioned compute price.	Existing provisioned compute price.	New provisioned compute price.	Existing serverless compute price.	New serverless compute price.	New serverless compute price.
Storage	Existing storage prices.	Existing storage prices.	New storage prices.	Existing storage prices.	New storage prices.	New storage prices.

Elastic pools and pooled databases

	Hyperscale elastic pools			Hyperscale elastic pooled databases
	Timeline: before December 15th, 2023	Timeline: on or after December 15th, 2023		Timeline: before December 15th, 2023	Timeline: on or after December 15th, 2023
		Elastic pool was created before December 15th, 2023	Elastic pool created after December 15th, 2023		Database was created or migrated to Hyperscale before December 15th, 2023	Database created or migrated to Hyperscale after December 15th, 2023
Compute	Existing provisioned compute price.	New provisioned compute price.	New provisioned compute price.	N/A (charged per elastic pool)
Storage	N/A – storage is charged per database.			Existing storage prices.	New storage prices.	New storage prices.

 

Can I continue to use reserved capacity for Hyperscale?

With reserved capacity, you make a commitment to use SQL Database for a period of one or three years to get a significant discount on the compute (vCores) costs. There are no changes to the Compute (vCores) pricing, and you can continue to use reserved capacity (“reservations”) for Hyperscale single databases with provisioned compute and Hyperscale elastic pools.

How can I move my existing databases to the new pricing?

Currently, there is no in-built support to switch pricing for existing databases. However, you can consider one of the redeployment methods (database copy, point-in-time restore, or geo-replication) to create a new “copy” of the existing Hyperscale database. The newly created “copy” of the database will be billed the new pricing. If you do decide to go down this path, do consider creating the new database with zone redundancy, as described here.

Does the reduction in compute price apply to all subscription offer types?

In the case of dev/test subscriptions and related offer types including Enterprise dev/test, where you were already not paying for license costs, there will not be a further reduction in the price of compute. For such subscriptions, the storage costs for Hyperscale resources will still be based on the guidelines in the “When does the change take effect, and what does it impact?”  and “What happens to my existing Hyperscale resources” sections in this blog post.

Can I still use Azure Hybrid Benefit for Hyperscale?

Azure Hybrid Benefit no longer applies to the Hyperscale tier, except for Hyperscale single databases with provisioned compute which were created prior to December 15, 2023. Even for those older databases, Azure Hybrid Benefit can only be used till December 14, 2026.

Note that specifying values of BasePrice or LicenseIncluded for the LicenseType parameter in APIs / SDKs / PowerShell / CLI, is only relevant for Hyperscale single databases with provisioned compute which were created prior to December 15, 2023. These values are effectively ignored for all other types of Hyperscale resources.

Current limitations and known issues

1. Consider a database which was created originally as a non-Hyperscale database prior to Dec 15th, 2023. If this database is then migrated to Hyperscale on or after Dec 15th, 2023, the Cost Summary section of the Azure portal will incorrectly show the "old pricing" for this database. The Cost Summary section in the Azure portal is only intended to be an estimate. We recommend you rely on the Cost Management section in the Azure portal to review actual costs.
2. Azure portal cost summary view in greater China regions does not show the updated pricing information accurately.  This is only a display issue and does not impact the billing in any way.  Please refer to the pricing calculator or the pricing page for accurate pricing information.