Borko Novakovic gives us a rundown of improvements to Azure SQL Managed Instances:
Azure SQL Managed Instance provide management operations that you can use to automatically deploy new managed instances, update instance properties, and delete instances when no longer needed. Most of the management operations in SQL Managed Instance are long-running but until now it was not possible for customers to get detailed information about operation status and progress in an easy and transparent way.
Through the introduction of a new CRUD API, the SQL Managed Instance resource is now visible from when the create request is submitted. In addition, the new OPERATIONS API adds the ability to monitor management operations, see operation steps, and take dependent actions based on operation progress.
Check out this blog post to learn how to effectively utilize new APIs in real-word scenarios.
If this product potentially fits your needs, also check out Vladimir Ivanovic’s post on performance improvements:
Previously, the tempdb I/O operations were governed as part of the instance log rate cap (which used to be configured to 22 MB/s for General Purpose and 48 MB/s for Business Critical). With this set of improvements, tempdb I/O operations are no longer governed as part of the instance log rate cap, allowing for a significantly higher tempdb I/O rates.
The improved tempdb performance will greatly improve the speed of tempdb-bound operations, such as running queries with large sorts/spills, or data loading through tempdb.
It looks like they’ve upped the caps on several storage-related limits for no extra charge.