Last week we evaluated Azure Synapse Analytics workspace for our new venture and any time we explore a new service on Azure, analyzing the cost becomes one of the primary task that we need to undergo so in this post we are going to share what we discovered/understood about Azure Synapse Analytics’ (SQL Pool) pricing model. So, let’s get started –
Azure Synapse Analytics is a MPP/distributed architecture where compute and storage are segregated and hence charged separately.
Compute is measured in terms of DWUc (compute Data Warehouse Units) units. Gen1 refers it as DWU, Data Warehouse Unit only i.e. no explicit mention of compute as it used to be called as Azure SQL DWH (Data Warehouse) earlier. Gen2 is what we are calling as Azure Synapse Analytics workspace.
There is NO fixed price per DWUc. As you plan to use more units, price per DWU per hour tend to increase e.g.
Also, note that reserved capacity is available for Gen1 only i.e. for Azure SQL DWH. As of writing this post, it’s under preview for Azure Synapse Analytics (Gen2/SQL Pool).
Another interesting point to know is that you are charged for compute on hourly basis. Partial hours are also counted as full hours i.e. if you run your compute service for 30 minutes, you still will be charged for an entire hour.
Data Storage includes the price for size of your data warehouse and 7-days of incremental snapshot storage. There is NO charge for the storage transactions i.e. you pay only for the stored data and not for any operations on the data as that’s implicitly covered in the compute price. Data storage is charged at €103.625 per TB of data processed (€0.15/1 TB/hour). Your data is copied to geo-redundant storage for disaster recovery which is charged separately at €0.102/GB/month.
This is also worth to be mentioned that storage is charged per TB basis. As your data goes beyond 1 TB of space, more storage is allocated in next 1 TB size and hence charged for entire 1 TB.
In another case study earlier, we quoted an example of cost per month for Azure Synapse Analytics SQL pool for different DWUs and here is the quick revisit of the same to get a quick idea about its monthly bill –
Cost per cDWU is per hour cost and storage is mentioned in TBs. 720 hours indicates a month cycle of 30 days period and 22 days are considered if your business allows you to pause the service over weekends, a minimum of eight days reduction. However, production workloads, most likely the service would run for entire month specially for a global application.
If you have some confusion about various terms used for Azure Synapse Analytics across different pages across the Internet, let’s get it clarified that –
Azure Synapse Analytics = Azure SQL DWH = Gen1
Azure Synapse Analytics (workspace) = Synapse SQL pool (data warehouse) = Gen2