For the uninformed: Microsoft SQL Azure Database is a cloud-based relational database service built on SQL Server technologies. It provides a highly available, scalable, multi-tenant database service hosted by Microsoft in the cloud. SQL Azure Database helps to ease provisioning and deployment of multiple databases. Developers do not have to install, setup, patch or manage any software.
A technical definition Cloud computing is “a computing capability that provides an abstraction between the computing resource and its underlying technical architecture (e.g., servers, storage, networks), enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.” This definition states that clouds have five essential characteristics: on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured service.
At the Mix 10 conference last week, during one of the sessions, the SQL Azure team announced that existing SQL Azure customers will be given access to the SQL Azure 50 GB preview on a request basis. Microsoft isn’t yet sharing availability or pricing details for the 50 GB option, but a spokesperson said they’d share those details “in the coming months” as part of the next SQL Azure service update.
On the cloud-hosted Exchange front, Microsoft also announced last week that it has increased the size of Exchange Online default mailboxes from 5 GB to 25 GB.
“This 5x increase is free of charge and automatically implemented on new users.You can increase existing users to 25GB if you need as your overall allocation for mailboxes has been increased to (25GB x number of users) instead of (5GB x number of users),” explained company officials in a blog posting this week.
If you’d like to nominate yourself for the preview program, you can email engagesa@microsoft.com