Azure SQL Performance Level Comparison
Update 10/2016 - This posting is better viewed in my new blog . Abstract Currently Azure SQL allows you to configure your database in one of three service tiers, i.e. Basic, Standard and Premium. The service tiers each allow you to select one of several performance levels. In all you have eight possible performance levels; Basic, S0, S1, S2, S3, P1, P2, P3. The goal of this exercise was to provide some quantification of these performance levels. Setup Test System: Azure VM with Windows Server 2012 R2 and SQL Server 2014. Database: SQL database with a complex history table (many columns) which held ~250K records. Client: SQL Server Mangment Studio (SSMS) hosted on the Test System. All test runs utilized a copy of the Database. For tests labeled "Local" the Database was hosted on the Test System. For all other tests the Database was hosted as an Azure SQL database under the labeled performance level. All queries were executed from the Client. Reported query executi