Microsoft has made a number of Azure-related announcements at their Ignite 2016 conference, fleshing out their cloud services infrastructure and demonstrating their commitment to their transition to the “cloud-first, mobile-first” productivity solutions company. Today, the company announced on the Azure Government blog that Azure Government is receiving the newest version of Azure SQL Database, namely v12.
The newest version of the managed cloud database is intended to make building and maintaining database applications easier and more productive for app developers, offering built-in intelligence to enable the highest possible levels of performance, reliability, and data protection.
Microsoft lists the following benefits attained by using Azure AQL v12:
- Compatible: Near-complete SQL Server 2016 engine compatibility
- Performant: Increased Premium performance levels at no additional cost and support for larger database sizes
- Secure: Intelligent security, transparent data encryption (TDE) and protection including Azure Active Directory authentication support.
- Reliable: Improved backup, recovery, and replication times.
Azure Government clients will automatically receive the newest version over the coming weeks. If you want to upgrade immediately, you can access V12 via PowerShell. An upgrade user interface will be coming soon.
Stay up to date on everything going on with Azure Government by following the team’s blog. If you want to give the cloud platform a try, then you can sign up here for an Azure Government trial.
