A service tier is a selectable Azure SQL Database performance level: in plain English, it answers “how much compute power do you need?” Higher tiers provide more capacity but cost more. section 10.3.1 section 10.5.1
Choose a tier with these practical trade-offs in mind:
- Start with Basic for experiments or nonproduction examples when modest capacity is enough. section 10.3.1
- Expect higher tiers to increase spending as performance requirements rise. section 10.3.1
- Keep replicated databases at the same or a compatible performance level so a secondary can handle failover load. section 10.5.1
Creating a Basic database
The Azure CLI selects the tier through the service-objective parameter: az sql db create --resource-group BanningRG --server BanningBooksServer --name BanningBooksDB --service-objective Basic. The same Basic objective can be specified when creating a geo-replica.
