Azure SQL Database Costs: Serverless Pause or Resize

Two compute tiers, two cost models

Azure SQL Database single databases run on the provisioned or the serverless compute tier. Microsoft’s serverless overview describes serverless as compute that scales with demand and bills for the compute used per second, and that automatically pauses during inactive periods when only storage is billed, resuming on the next login or activity.

The details that decide whether serverless fits:

• Serverless is available in the General Purpose and Hyperscale service tiers, but auto-pause and auto-resume are currently supported only in General Purpose.
• The auto-pause delay ranges from 15 minutes to 10,080 minutes (seven days), in 1-minute steps, defaulting to 60 minutes; -1 disables it.
• Below the configured minimum vCores, compute is still billed at the minimum.
• Microsoft positions provisioned compute for databases with regular, higher average usage that cannot tolerate a warm-up delay.

A provisioned database is therefore a candidate for resizing, an elastic pool or a move to serverless, not for a nightly pause.

What ZopNight does

ZopNight can pause and resume a serverless-tier Azure SQL Database on a schedule. Provisioned and DTU databases can’t be paused, so ZopNight refuses a scheduled stop on them and prices a tier change instead; its pause remediation template never touches Azure SQL. From the Azure catalog:

• Idle Azure SQL Database reads DTU use over 30 days. For a provisioned database it recommends a one-tier step down priced from the real rate difference, because pausing is not possible on that tier.
• Azure SQL Dev/Test Could Use Serverless Tier prices the move from the compute share of the bill and the measured off-hours idle fraction, keeping storage in the bill because it still charges while paused.
• Azure SQL Right-sizing and Azure SQL Multiple Small DBs Could Use Elastic Pool address size and consolidation.
• Azure SQL Reserved Capacity covers steady production databases.
• Azure SQL Dev/Test Excessive Backup Retention trims test backups.
• Posture checks: TDE Not Enabled, Auditing Not Enabled and Threat Detection Not Enabled.

Findings can be exported to an Excel workbook for the DBA team, with savings de-duplicated per database so overlapping options do not stack.

The directory’s Azure SQL Database scheduling notes cover the serverless pause mechanics, which a ZopNight schedule can drive for serverless-tier databases. Fact sheets: Azure SQL Database and elastic pools.