A few years ago, Microsoft offered DocumentDB as a Service (DaaS) that supported a limited set of features and functionalities. Today, most of the cloud-based services, such as Bing, Azure, and Office 365 are using DocumentDB. Microsoft took DocumentDB to the next level and came up with Azure Cosmos DB – a globally distributed, multi-model database.

Azure Cosmos DB is one of the latest cloud based database services. It is a schema-free database system designed for scalable, broadly distributed, highly responsive, and highly available applications. Azure Cosmos DB also supports several NoSQL APIs including DocumentDB, SQL, MongoDB, Gremlin, and Azure Tables. It can handle a variety of data to store like key-value, document, columnar, and graph types in a variety of environments, including Internet of Things (IoT) and others.

Azure Cosmos DB is a schema agnostic database engine to support multiple systems. This is a schema on-read database which provides faster DB write operations.

Key capabilities of Azure Cosmos DB

1. Global Distribution – distribute the application instantly,
   1. Local distribution – All resources available in a region will be horizontally partitioned using resource partitions.
   2. Global Distributions – this is a distribution of resource partition across geographical regions.
      
      
2. Multi-model, multi-API support: This database engine is based on the atom-record-sequence (ARS) data model.
   1. Atom (A) – Atoms consist of a small set of primitive data types like number, string, and Boolean.
   2. Record (R) – Records are structs composed of types stored in Atom.
   3. Sequence (S) – Sequences represent arrays consisting of atoms, records, or sequences.

3. Horizontal scaling of storage and throughput

   It is designed to manage elastically scaled throughput, based on the application traffic patterns across different geographical regions to support fluctuating workloads varying both by geography and time.

4. Low latency

   Microsoft assures end-to-end very low latency in the 99th percentile within the same Azure region.  Cosmos DB provides a method for the user to distinguish between transactions with high latency vs. a database being unavailable.

5. Transparent multi-homing

   Transparent multi-homing is a capability that supports an application in the unlikely event of regional failure or disaster. Azure Cosmos DB automatically fails in the order of defined priority. Priorities can be used to direct the requests to specific available regions in the event of regional failures. One of the best parts is dynamic association of “priority” to the regions associated with the Azure Cosmos DB database account.

6. Multiple, well-defined consistency models

   Offers more granular options over the control that decides database performance, and consistency.

7. Schema-free
   
   It automatically indexes all the data it ingests without requiring any schema or indexes.

8. Query the data for high availability

   Querying like DocumentDB SQL, MongoDB, Gremlin (preview), and Azure Tables (preview).

In case you want to read a detailed introduction, please follow this link.

PS: This is my origional Article I also submit this article at http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/

In this article, I am going to compare both Azure SQL database and Azure SQL data warehouse. Given below is the tabular comparision of both.

	Azure SQL Database	Azure SQL Data Warehouse
Definition and Release	In 2013, Microsoft introduced Azure SQL Database which has its origin in the on-premises Microsoft SQL Server Azure SQL Database is a relational database-as-a service using the Microsoft SQL Server Engine. SQL Database is a high-performance, reliable, and secure database you can use to build data-driven applications and websites in the programming language of your choice, without needing to manage infrastructure. Read More	In 2015 (however public availability was in July 2016) Microsoft added SQL Data Warehouse to the Azure cloud portfolio which has its origin in the on-premises Microsoft Analytics Platform System (APS). Azure SQL Data Warehouse is a massively parallel processing (MPP) cloud-based, scale-out, relational database capable of processing massive volumes of data. Read More
Purpose: OLAP vs OLTP	SQL DB is specifically for Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) This means operational data with a lot of short transactions like INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE by multiple people and/or processes. The data is most often highly normalized stored in many tables.	SQL DW is specifically for Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) for data warehouses This means consolidation data with a lower volume, but more complex queries. The data is most
Storage size	The current size limit of an Azure SQL Database is 4TB, and will probably end up around 10TB in the near future.	Azure SQL Data Warehouse which has no storage limit at all (only the limit of your wallet), because the storage is separated from the compute.
Concurrent Queries	SQL DB can have 6400 concurrent workers (requests)	SQL DW can execute a maximum of 32 queries at one moment
Pricing (Update Till July 2017)	Azure SQL DB starts with €4,20 a month	Azure SQL DW starts around €900, – a month excluding the cost of storage which is included in SQL DB. The storage costs for Azure SQL DW are around €125, – per TB per month. And the maximum costs of a single SQL DB are around €13500.
DTU vs DWU	SQL DB has 15 different pricing tiers which specify the number of Database Transaction Units (DTU) and the storage size/type: Basic Standard (S0, S1, S2, S3) Premium (P1, P2, P3, P4, P6, P11, P15) Premium RS (PRS1, PRS2, PRS4, PRS6) Basic has only 5 DTUs and the highest number of DTUs is, at the time of writing, 4000. the term DTU is a bit vague. It is a mysterious combination of RAM, CPU and read-write rates, but basically if you want to double the performance of your current database you just need to double the number of DTU’s for your database.	SQL DW has 12 different pricing tiers and uses Data Warehouse Units (DWU) to specify the performance level. DWU100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 1000, 1200, 1500, 2000, 3000, 6000 The term DWU is a little less vague if you divide that number by 100 you have the number of compute nodes available for that pricing tier. On the other hand, the exact combination of CPU, memory and IOPS per compute note is unknown.
Concurrent Connection	SQL DB can handle 6400 concurrent logins and 30000 concurrent sessions.	SQL DW has a maximum of 1024 active connections
PolyBase	Azure SQL Database does not support it.	Azure SQL Data Warehouse supports PolyBase. This technology allows you to access data outside the database with regular Transact SQL. It can for example use a file in an Azure Blob Storage container as a (external) table. Other options are importing and exporting data from Hadoop or Azure Data Lake Store
Replication	SQL DB supports active geo-replication. This enables you to configure up to four readable secondary databases in the same or different location.	SQL DW does not support active geo-replication, only Azure Storage replication. However, this is not a live, readable, synchronized copy of your database! It’s more like a backup.
In Memory OLTP tables	SQL DB supports in-memory OLTP	SQL DW is OLAP and does not support it.
Always encrypted	SQL DB supports Always Encrypted to protect sensitive data.	SQL DW does not support it.

In case if you want to read more please follow this PDF.

PS: This is my origional Article I also submit this article at http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/

Here, I am going to explain Azure Update Management Solution. The main role of this solution is to provide you easy access to all available updates of your Azure VM. The Update Management Solution allows you to manage updates for your Windows and Linux computers deployed in Azure VMs. Right now, this is not available for public but in case you want to access this, you need to fill this form. OMS Update Management is one of the solutions across Windows and Linux.

Key Features

If you are new to OMS Update Management, you can view Manage updates across on-premises and clouds for Windows Server & Linux by Ravi Kiran.

How to enable Update Management

In Virtual Machines blade, go to “Automation+control”, then Select “Manage updates”. If the Update Management solution is not enabled to your VM, then it will give you an option to enable the solution. The log data starts to flow the workspace when the solution is enabled. Then, this data would be available for analysis in the dashboard. This entire process will take 30 minutes.

NOTE

While enabling the process, don’t close the browser; it will take around 15 minutes.
You can see the graphical representation of the number of updates missing on the VM from the Missing updates by severity tile at the Update Management solution in OMS, you can see required updates for Windows Server and Linux VMs running on Azure.

In the main view of the Update Management solution just scroll to the right side to get to the point of managing update deployments. There you can define a one time, a weekly or monthly schedule. The possibility adding different VMs to different schedules ensures that your services running on Azure VMs will be always available during this process.

After a run you can check the update deployment result, when you need information about which update got installed on which VM.As you can see, Microsoft does not do an automatic updating of your Azure VMs. But you get the freedom of choice, if you want to update your VMs manually or automate the update deployment with a few simple steps through the Operations Management Suite.

Create a new Update Deployment for the VM by clicking the “Schedule deployment for this VM” button at the top of the blade and specify the required values. After you have completed configuring the schedule, click the “OK” button and you return to the status dashboard. You will notice that the Scheduled table shows the deployment schedule you just created.

The table below shows how the tile categorizes the updates missing by update classification.

View update deployment state

After executing the scheduled deployment, Double-clicking the completed update deployment takes you to the detailed deployment status page.

Select “All Logs and Output Tiles” or you can use log search For Viewing Detailed Activities Performed. This Will Show the Job Stream of The Run Book Responsible for Managing The Update Deployment On The Target VM.

Last point – In case you are new here, do not forgot to read more details about OMS Management.

PS: This is my origional Article I also submit this article at http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/

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1) The ‘Why’ and ‘How’ of Public Cloud
This webinar will cover the basic concepts of cloud computing and give you a foundation for understanding the fundamentals of Microsoft Azure.

Register to attend this complimentary webinar.

Date: Tuesday, April 7, 2015
Time: 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM IST
Speaker: Deepthi Anantharam Technology Evangelist, Microsoft India Register here

2) Introduction to basics of Microsoft Azure
Join our Microsoft Azure 101 webinar to learn all about the basics of Microsoft Azure, our public hybrid cloud platform.

Register to attend this complimentary webinar.

Date: Wednesday, April 8, 2015
Time: 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM IST
Speaker: Abhishek Narain  Technology Evangelist, Microsoft India Register Here

3) Azure – What’s Brewing – Monthly Update
Azure-What’s Brewing is a monthly update where our expert from Microsoft talk about all that has transpired on Azure during the month.

This is your opportunity to hear first-hand all the latest updates around Azure and get all your queries answered by Microsoft experts. Attend this to stay current on Azure and interact with our domain expert.

In this webinar, our expert will :
– Share insights into the latest updates and announcements related to Microsoft Azure.
– Provide technical deep dive into the relevance and application of Azure updates on cloud development and infrastructure.
Register to attend this complimentary webinar.

Date: Thursday, April 9, 2015
Time: 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM IST
Speaker: Deepthi Anantharam  Technology Evangelist, Microsoft India Register Here

Note: Join our Azure Vidyapeeth Webinar series at www.aka.ms/azure-vidyapeeth .
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Participate in the Azure Rider contest to win a Harley Davidson, Windows phones and many more exciting prizes ! Register for the Azure Rider contest at www.azurerider.com .