Post courtesy of Evan Basalik

One of the most resource intensive applications you can run on Windows is SQL Server. To some extent, this is demonstrated by the vast amounts of performance guidance and troubleshooting documents that exist all over the web. When running SQL Server in an Azure Virtual Machine (i.e., IaaS), there is one additional article you want to be sure to read. It was written and edited by a virtual who’s who of Windows performance, Azure performance and SQL Server performance. Even if you aren’t running SQL Server, but want to understand best how to build high performance Azure IaaS applications, this article has a wealth of knowledge.

Performance Guidance for SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machines.

Authors: Silvano Coriani, Jasraj Dange, Ewan Fairweather, Xin Jin, Alexei Khalyako, Sanjay Mishra, Selcin Turkarslan

Technical Reviewers: Mark Russinovich, Brad Calder, Andrew Edwards, Suraj Puri, Flavio Muratore, Hanuma Kodavalla, Madhan Arumugam Ramakrishnan, Naveen Prakash, Robert Dorr, Roger Doherty, Steve Howard, Yorihito Tada, Kun Cheng, Chris Clayton, Igor Pagliai, Shep Sheppard, Tim Wieman, Greg Low, Juergen Thomas, Guy Bowerman, Evgeny Krivosheev

Editor: Beth Inghram

Summary: Developers and IT professionals should be fully knowledgeable about how to optimize the performance of SQL Server workloads running in Windows Azure Infrastructure Services and in more traditional on-premises environments. This technical article discusses the key factors to consider when evaluating performance and planning a migration to SQL Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machines. It also provides certain best practices and techniques for performance tuning and troubleshooting when using SQL Server in Windows Azure Infrastructure Services.