Today Microsoft announced a new centralized management hub for Azure SQL Databases. The centralized management hub is a unified platform for all your SQL Server Databases (not Data warehouses) in Azure. This new centralized hub is just the beginning of an expanding service to help centralize your management and deployment of SQL Server options. The intent is to give a unified location where all SQL Databases can be viewed and managed including SQL VMs.
This will be an expanding offering that I can see improving the DBA’s experience substantially over time. The two big wins just announced are, the ability to register your VM with the SQL VM Resource Provider and the ability to search for a SQL VM image without having to go to the compute section in Marketplace.
When you register your SQL VM with the resource provider, it ensures compliance with the product terms, but also unlocks auto-patching, auto-backup, monitoring, manageability options, licensing flexibility and ultimately allows you to control the manageability of your service how you want it.
The second item I mentioned that I like is the streamlined options for VMs but also having all the information about them in a single location.
You can choose the type of database, SQL, Managed Instance or VM.
My favorite part is that you can choose the type of virtual machine you want, including bringing your own license. There are many customers that will find this helpful.
Look to this location and feature to bring you manageability features in the future which will allow you to manage multiple installations.
You can see there blog here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Azure-SQL-Database/Unified-Azure-SQL-experience/ba-p/815368
A video about it here: https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Data-Exposed/Azure-SQL-unified-Azure-portal-experience?WT.mc_id=dataexposed-c9-niner
