Azure Deployment Experience - Series 1 (VMs with MS-SQL)

There are a lot of videos and tutorials on Azure VMs with SQL and its deployment. I am not going to get into any of the existing content. 

The content is more about the high-level practical approaches if we were to go for Azure VMs which has to support Microsoft SQL. This is based on my current experience in deploying our solutions in Azure.

• First, if there is an Enterprise Agreement, there shall be a Pricing Sheet that will help you to know how much a VM would cost; remember that the cost will vary according to the configuration of VM along with the Edition of SQL.
• If you want a 'Test' or 'Development' server, create a minimal VM (say 2 core, 3.5 GB RAM or 4 Core,7GB RAM) and download SQL Express. SQL Express 2012 can support up to 10 GB Database size and you can have multiple databases and Express 2012 can support up to 4 Cores. 
• If not Production server, but require a server for replicating the Production, go for SQL Web Edition which costs much less compared to Standard / Enterprise.
• For Production, SQL Standard is recommended and a better choice as it will be required to configure Backups, Maintenance Jobs.
• Go for Enterprise, if we really require Always-On, Inline Memory Processing, Partition kind of features. The cost of Enterprise is nearly 4 times that of Standard.

I have not experimented with Azure SQL DB, as its a shared chunk from a bigger SQL but its not a dedicated SQL Instance except for the assured DTUs.

Importantly, create the VMs using the new portal and as part of ARM, so that all latest features of new portal are available to work with. It is not possible to migrate a VM from Classic to ARM at this point of time, without a down time.