Slow performance on Azure SQL

[Geert Bellekens]

We are thinking about moving our EA database from an SQL Server instance on a VM in Azure, to a proper Azure SQL Database.

I managed to get it working using the latest version of the OLEDB driver for SQL Server, but compared to the existing setup, this is terribly slow.
Every click needs just a bit of waiting, and loading a larger diagrams takes a couple of seconds (whereas in the original setup it felt like the diagram loads instantly)
Our EA client is also installed on a VM in Azure.

Moving to Azure SQL would mean a serious cut in the costs, but I can't do it if it means the performance is that much worse.

Does anyone have any experience using Azure SQL as backend for Enterprise Architect?
How did it perform?
Any tips and tricks to make this work a bit faster?

Geert

[Paolo F Cantoni]

No answer Geert, but we're also interested in what you find.

Paolo

[roland23]

Hi Geert.
I am working since quite some time with a big repository on Azure SQL - but I also think that it is very slow.
Definitely not feeling to work with such a slugish setup.

I am not sure if the cloud server might improve the situation.
 

[OpenIT Solutions]

This has some useful pointers https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/key-causes-of-performance-differences-between-sql-managed-instance-and-sql-server/. Looks like you might want to connect via ProCloud, hosted on an Azure VM in the same region as the DB. Also see the section on encryption at rest by default. If not required, switching it off would increase performance...

[Geert Bellekens]

This has some useful pointers https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/key-causes-of-performance-differences-between-sql-managed-instance-and-sql-server/. Looks like you might want to connect via ProCloud, hosted on an Azure VM in the same region as the DB. Also see the section on encryption at rest by default. If not required, switching it off would increase performance...

We currently have EA v15.2 connected to Azure SQL databases.
Since we have multiple repositories, I grouped them into an elastic pool using 50 DTU (the minimum) This has improved the performance a lot.
The cool thing is that you can, temporarily, increase the DTU's if you have a special operation that requires a lot of database processing (like migrating from the old SQL server repositories)

This is now working pretty much OK. The performance is similar, or even a bit better, compared to our previous setup.
The only thing we notice is that opening a model seems to take a few seconds longer than before. Once loaded it's perfectly fine.

Once there is a stable enough version 16 (currently still too many showstopper bugs), I'll try that as well.
Could be interesting to see if installign pro-cloud server would result in better performance.
I'm not convinced it will since our client is running in Azure (in the same region) as well, but I'll report back if I have some results.

Geert

[ducatiross]

Hi Geert,

We are running a SQL Server database on Azure for our EA DB and I have to say I have never noticed problems with the performance. I will try to find out the specs for you.

Matthew

[ducatiross]

Geert - these are the details for our Azure instance of a SQL Server DB for the EA Repository :

It’s running on Standard tier, S0, with 10 DTUs assigned, 30GB Maximum Storage size. No elastic pool, nothing extra and it’s running at about £12pcm.

It is a very small repository at the moment (about 260mb) supporting 4 concurrent users.

Matthew

[Geert Bellekens]

Thanks Matthew,

We found 10DTU's to be a bit limited.
As we have multiple repositories (4 PROD + DEV + TEST), so we could put them all in an elastic pool using the minimum of 50 DTU's.
This costs about € 110 per month, which is less than 6 x £12
We have at most 20 concurrent users.

Geert