SQL Server 2022: What you Need to Know

SQL Server 2022 Features Azure-centric Improvements and Features

This month, Microsoft announced their preview of SQL Server 2022 - their most Azure-enabled release to date.

Disaster Recovery and Always-On Availability

SQL Server 2022 includes a new link feature for Azure SQL Managed Instance.

• Users now get the benefits of a PaaS environment applied to disaster recovery by using a built-in Distributed Availability Group (DAG) to replicate data to a previously deployed Azure SQL Managed Instance as a DR replica site. The instance is ready and waiting for whenever you need it—no lengthy configuration or maintenance is required.
  
  • This allows you to spend less time on setup and management even when compared to an IaaS environment
  • You can also use this link feature in read scale-out scenarios to offload heavy requests that might otherwise affect database performance.
  • You can restore (move) the database from the Azure SQL Managed Instance (DR) to on-premises SQL Server and in the on-prem instance from the backup file stored in a storage account.

Near Real-Time Analytical Processing

The Azure Synapse Link enables automatic change feed that captures the real-time changes in the SQL Server database and feeds it into the Azure Synapse Analytics. Unlike moving an on-premise database to Azure Synapse using the ETL (Extract-Transform-Load) tool, there's no lag in the real-time data processing.

Performance, Security, and Availability

The SQL Server 2022 Azure Synapse Link brings together both operational and analytical stores. Along with Azure Purview, users can drive deeper insights, predictions and governance from their data at scale. Cloud integration is enhanced with disaster recovery (DR) to Azure SQL Managed Instance, along with no-ETL (extract, transform, and load) connections to cloud analytics, which allow database administrators to manage their data estates with greater flexibility and minimal impact to the end-user. Specially, SQL Server 2022 offers these following benefits:

• Hybrid transactional processing
• Analytical processing
• Near real-time analysis
• Minimal impact on the source (operational) system
• You can leverage synapse data using Azure Machine Learning, Power BI, Spark, combine data with many different data sources such as Azure Data Lake Storage, SQL pools.
  
  

Learn more about the SQL Server 2022 release on Microsoft's webpage or by reaching out to one of our expert DBAs via the link below.