Cost saving in Azure SQL Database.

In your mobile phone there is a setting to turn off the screen if there is no activity for a certain amount of time. This helps in saving battery.

Similarly, if there is no activity in Azure SQL Database, we have an option to pause the database. This helps in saving cost.

The feature is called 'Auto-Pause' which is available in the Serverless Compute tier.

Once enabled the database will be paused if the CPU = 0 and number of sessions = 0 for a certain amount of time. The threshold that can be set is between 1 HR to 7 Days.

Eg: If we set auto-pause to 1 HR then if the CPU = 0 and number of sessions = 0 for more than 1 HR then the Azure SQL database will be paused.

This feature is supported only in vCore Purchase model and the Hardware Type supported is Standard-series (Gen-5).

The billing is done per second. For a minimum configuration of East US region, it would cost roughly 43 rupees per hour so almost 2000 rupee (almost $24) per weekend for a single database.

If we do a simple math approximately there are total 105 days as weekend in the year 2023. So if we calculate cost for all these days it would total to around 1 lakh rupees ($1300 roughly per year) for a single database.

If your DB will not have any activity during the weekend and by enabling this auto-pause feature this amount of cost saving can be done.

Thanks VV!!

#azuresql #azurearchitect