Fully managed SQL Server instance offering almost complete compatibility, including SQL Agent, CLR and queries across databases; disaster recovery to another region is achieved with auto-failover groups.
Also called MI, MI.
Read more: Microsoft Learn
In the Ultra Transcenders books
AZ-305AZ-700SC-500AI-103DP-900DP-800
Each book explains Azure SQL Managed Instance in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Fully managed
An Android Enterprise setup for company-owned devices that one person uses only for work, with Intune in control of the entire device.
- SQL Server
The relational database from Microsoft that organisations host and run themselves, in their own data centres or on VMs. Its engine also sits underneath the Azure SQL services and SQL database in Fabric.
- Deployment modes
The two ways ARM can deploy: Incremental, the default, creates or updates what the template lists and ignores everything else; Complete also removes resource group contents absent from the template.
- SQL Agent
The job scheduler for SQL Server, offered on SQL Server on VMs and SQL Managed Instance but not on Azure SQL Database.
- CLR
Lets .NET code run inside SQL Server (common language runtime); SQL Server on VMs and SQL Managed Instance support it, while Azure SQL Database doesn't.
- DR
Disaster recovery means getting a service running again from another region or site, with success judged by RPO and RTO; uptime SLAs and data retention are different concerns.
- region
A provider-defined grouping in VCF Automation of Supervisors that all share one NSX Local Manager; tenants consume its compute, storage and memory via quotas set per region.
Related terms
- ALTER ANY EXTERNAL MIRROR
A permission that the account used for mirroring must hold in an Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance or SQL Server source before Fabric can mirror it. Anyone with CONTROL, or in the db_owner role, already has it.
- Managed Instance link
Uses distributed availability groups to replicate data in near real time between SQL Server and Azure SQL Managed Instance.
- Microsoft Entra admin
Set on an Azure SQL managed instance or logical server, this is the single Entra principal (a user, group, managed identity or service principal) able to log in to all its databases and to add further Entra users.
- SAMI
A system-assigned managed identity, which exists only as long as the single Azure resource it belongs to. To mirror Azure SQL Database or Azure SQL Managed Instance, the logical server's SAMI must be turned on and set as the primary identity (for SQL Database a user-assigned identity can be used instead, in preview).
- SQL Managed Instance auditing
On Azure SQL Managed Instance, a single SQL Server Audit server audit spans every database. Targets are Blob storage as .xel files (TO URL), or Log Analytics or Event Hubs (TO EXTERNAL_MONITOR).
- SQL Server connector
Used in Power Automate and Azure Logic Apps, this connector talks to SQL Server, Azure SQL Managed Instance and Azure SQL Database. Triggers for new or changed rows rely on change tracking being enabled.