Scheduling Synapse Dedicated SQL Pool
Can ZopNight schedule Synapse Dedicated SQL Pool?
Pausing a Synapse dedicated SQL pool stops the DWU meter, the dominant charge, billed per DWU-hour whether 0 queries run or 500. Storage bills separately either way. Pause cancels in-flight work and waits for rollback, so a large open transaction can stretch the pause by hours.
How the stop works
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Behaviour | paused and resumed via the Synapse pool Pause/Resume operations, halting DWU compute billing while paused. |
Example schedules
- 0 8 * * 1-5 — Business Hours Start: Start at 8:00 AM on weekdays
- 0 18 * * 1-5 — Business Hours Stop: Stop at 6:00 PM on weekdays
- 0 22 * * * — Night Shutdown: Stop at 10:00 PM every day
- 0 6 * * 1-5 — Morning Startup: Start at 6:00 AM on weekdays
- 0 20 * * 5 — Weekend Shutdown: Stop at 8:00 PM on Friday
- 0 7 * * 1 — Weekend Startup: Start at 7:00 AM on Monday
DWU-hours are the whole game
A dedicated SQL pool bills its provisioned DWU level for every hour it is online, idle or saturated. Pause is the only mechanism that stops that meter, and on mid-size pools the stakes are large: the gap between 168 hours and 50 hours a week at a fixed DWU rate is the kind of number that funds the rest of the cost program. No other single schedule in a Synapse workspace moves as much money.
Pause cancels work, then waits for it
Pausing is not instant and not gentle: running queries are cancelled and open transactions roll back, and the pause completes only when rollback does. A bulk load that has been running for six hours can hold the pause hostage for a comparable stretch while it unwinds. The practical rule is to land the pause after the nightly load’s completion, or to gate the load on finishing before the window. That matters more here than on any stop-style schedule, because rollback both delays the saving and wastes the interrupted work.
Storage is a separate, indifferent line
Data in a dedicated pool bills per TB on its own meter, pause or no pause. The pause zeroes compute only. Pools carrying tens of terabytes keep a substantial floor, and the honest business case quotes DWU-hours saved next to the storage line that stays.
Resume, then warm
Resume takes minutes before connections succeed, and the first queries recompile plans and repopulate caches, so expect a sluggish first quarter-hour. Schedule resume ahead of the morning’s first scheduled refresh, and put a warm-up script in the gap if analysts hit dashboards at 8:00 sharp.
Where the schedule fits the shape of use
Dedicated pools are batch-and-business-hours creatures: load overnight or at dawn, query during the day. A pause window from the end of the evening load to the pre-dawn resume matches that rhythm and typically halves the pool’s monthly compute without anyone noticing.