Kevin Hill with an introductory-level discussion of Azure SQL Database:
Some basic terminology:
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Cloud: No such thing. It is just your stuff on someone else’s machines that they maintain for you.
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Virtual Machine (VM): A Virtual Server on some physical servers…yours, or someone else’s.
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Azure: Fancy name for Microsoft’s cloud. As a noun or an adverb it means “blue”. Or a small butterfly.
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Azure SQL database: Just a database in Azure on some storage
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Azure Virtual Machine: A VM on Microsoft’s Azure servers, that you do not have to maintain the underlying physical infrastructure.
This is a nice, very high-level introduction to why Azure SQL Database exists.