Hi Shane,
Under Azure SQL Database Serverless General Purpose tier (this is what is provided with free offer), any time the database is not Paused you are being "charged" vCore seconds. Simply making a connection to the database will cause a Paused database to Resume and switch to Online status.
If there are no connections then the database should auto-pause after 20 minute delay. A brief connection can trigger over 20 minutes of usage due to this delay. When the database is Paused then there are no compute charges (vCore seconds).
Below screenshot shows a Paused serverless database:
With the above in mind, you can see that even an application that only executes a few extremely lightweight queries can consume lots of vCore seconds if it remains connected to the server and/or connects often.
Serverless General Purpose tier only makes sense in limited number of use cases. For example, say you had an operation that ran only on 1st of the month for 5 hours that imported data and generated some reports. In this example it would make sense since you would only pay for small number of hours of compute and could have really powerful server (if needed) during those hours.
If you have an application you are developing I recommend you start off with a DTU based SQL Database SKU so that you have a relatively predictable monthly bill. For example, you could start with Standard S0 SKU (10 DTUs) and if needed scale up to higher SKU later.
Serverless compute tier for Azure SQL Database
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql/database/serverless-tier-overview
Please click Accept Answer and upvote if the above was helpful.
Thanks.
-TP
RetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue
Search and Browse the WWW like it's 1997 | Search results from DuckDuckGo
HTML:
3.2
| Encoding:
UTF-8
| Version:
0.7.4