In the contemporary business arena, all organizations are paced against each other to reach a global standard and achieve unwavering customer loyalty. Due to this unspoken competition, data has evolved into becoming one of the most important assets of an organization. But, simply acquiring customer data is not of much use to a company unless insights can be drawn from them. This is the reason for the designing and consequent popularity of data analytics services. In this article, we will be looking at one such service Azure Synapse Analytics Pricing and features.
Data analytics can be defined as the service that aids the process of converting the business data of an organization into actionable insights. Data-driven businesses employ this to derive insights from the acquired raw data that is consequently used to increase the productivity of the internal systems. Moreover, it is also a source for predictive analytics for smart decision-making.
What is Azure Synapse Analytics and its important features
The features available under the Azure Synapse Analytics Pricing structure unify the ability of business data storage and advanced analytics solutions for big data. The Synapse is designed to create a single service to ease the performance for workloads during the processing, managing, and serving of data. This data is later used to create business intelligence reports/dashboards in Power BI and perform Predictive Analytics.
In simple words, it is an analytics service that is capable of analyzing unlimited information, which later helps large data-driven companies in attaining global recognition. The Azure Synapse Analytics has been developed by Microsoft as an evolved format of the Azure SQL Data Warehouse. This service has the ability to create predictive insights on the basis of the integration of Power BI and Azure Machine Learning. This machine learning capacity also has the ability to improve the query performance capacity of an organization drastically which enables the user to tackle and query huge quantities of information.
The importance of the service can be derived from the features provided by it. These can be categorized in the following manner:-
- Scaling – The service makes it possible for business to acquire data resources at scale. This implies that actionable insights can be delivered all over big data analytics systems and data warehouses with lightning speed.
- Actionable Insights – Synapse Analytics enables the user organization to extend the possibility of deriving insights from the acquired data using predictive analytics and to apply the models of machine learning techniques to all other applications within the system.
- Unification of Experience – The hybrid data integration capabilities of the service helps in the reduction of time taken to develop projects. This in turn provides a centralized experience while developing advanced analytics solutions.
What is Pricing Structure, Planning, and managing costs for Synapse Analytics by Azure:
The planning for cost management in Azure Synapse requires certain prerequisites, including an Azure Subscription as cost analysis in cost management supports several Azure account types but not all. The full list of account types is available under Understand cost management data. To view the information related to providing access, Assign access to data is to be viewed. Finally, the planning of Azure synapse costs can be made using the Azure pricing calculator.
Estimating costs of Synapse Analytics before using:
In the process of creating the Azure Synapse resources, the user can view the estimated costs. A single workspace is designed to contain a serverless SQL Pool within it. This SQL Pool will not incur charges unless the user company runs its queries. But, you need to create other resources like the dedicated SQL pools and the server-less Apache Spark pools within the workspaces.
In order to create the workspace and estimate pricing, the following is to be done:-
- Navigating to the Azure portal
- Creating a resource
- Reviewing the estimated price
- Complete the resource creation
Various components for charges while using Synapse Analytics:
When user organizations create or put to use an Azure Synapse Analytics resource, the charges incurred subsequently by them may include the following components:-
- Dedicated SQL Pool – The Azure Synapse Analytics Pricing structure bills the user for this feature, based on the number of DWU Blocks and hours running.
- Storage – The billing is charged here on the basis of the number of TBs stored
- Serverless SQL Pool – The user here is charged on the basis of the Tb of Dat processed.
- Apache Spark Pool – Here the user is charged based on the number of instances and the number of hours running.
- Orchestration Activity Runs – This billing is done based on the total number of activity runs.
- Data Movement – In the case of the copy activities run on the Azure Integration Runtime, the billing is done on the basis of DIU used and execution duration.
- Data Lake Storage Gen2 – Resources of Azure Synapse also create resources of Data Lake Storage 2 for which the user can incur charges.
Reserved capacity price under Azure Synapse Analytics Pricing structure:
DATA INTEGRATION:-
In reserved capacity, the hybrid data integration capabilities are calculated on the following:-
Data Pipelines –
| Type | Azure-hosted Managed VNET Prices | Azure-hosted price | Self-hosted Price |
| Orchestration Activity run | $1 per 1,000 runs | $1per 1,000 runs | $1.50per 1,000 runs |
| Data Movement | $0.25/DIU-hour | $0.25/DIU-hour | $0.10/hour |
| Pipeline activity integration runtime | $1/hour(up to 50 concurrent pipeline activities | $0.005/hour | $0.002/hour |
| Pipeline activity external integration runtime | $1/hour(up to 800 concurrent external pipeline activities) | $0.00025/hour | $0.0001/hour |
Data –
| Type | Price |
| Basic | $0.257 per vCore-hour |
| Standard | $0.325 per vCore-hour |
Operation Charges –
| Number of operations | Price |
| First 1million operations | Free |
| After 1million, per 50,000 operations | $0.25 |
DATA EXPLORATION AND WAREHOUSING:-
Serverless –
| Price | Free Quality | |
| Serverless | $5 per TB of data processed | 10 TB of free queries per month until 31st December 2021 |
Dedicated – This is inclusive of adaptive caching that delivers the better performance of workloads.
BIG DATA ANALYTICS:-
| Type | Price | Free quality |
| Memory-Optimized | $0.143 per vCore-hour | 120 free vCore-hours per month until 31st December 2021. |
Method of monitoring costs for Azure Synapse Analytics:
In the process of using Azure Synapse links or resources, the user is bound to incur charges. The Azure resources usage is billed at varying rates based on tome intervals like seconds, minutes, hours, or days. This variation can also be caused due to the variation in usage units. When the user organization begins to use the Azure Synapse resources, the costs incurred by them can be viewed in the cost analysis.
The use of cost analysis implies the pattern of viewing the cost incurred in graphs and tables format which is differentiated on the basis of time intervals. Thus, the process of using and consistently viewing the cost analysis is a method of monitoring the costs incurred by the user organization while using Azure Synapse Analytics. Along with this, when a user switches to viewing the cost analysis over larger periods of time, the actual spending patterns can be analyzed. To view the costs incurred in cost analysis, the following steps need to be followed:-
- Enter the Azure portal by signing into it.
- Click on scope; choose subscription or resource group within the Azure portal. Then click on cost analysis in the menu. Click on the scope to switch to a different scope in cost analysis.
- By default, the cost of services will be shown in the first donut chart. Then click on the chart labelled as Azure synapse.
Big data analytics performed in real-time:
Big data analytics is one of the most popular features provided by popular analytics services across the globe. One of the biggest challenges behind performing big data analysis is to derive actionable insights from the data within a short period of time. There are multiple stages in the process of big data which include:-
- Provisioning the internal infrastructure
- Automating the external pipeline activities related to data and
- Connecting the built in data source connections to the external sources of data.
It is hard for any analytics service to combine all these abilities and perform big data analytics and also provide actionable insights. But, Synapse Analytics from Azure is one such service that successfully combines all these features and skillfully provides insights in real-time that later helps organizations to increase their productivity. The Synapse Analytics service aims to give the user organization the skillfully support required to distribute the data analysis workloads with decreased fiction.
Also, in relation to big data analytics, the concept of automated cluster executions and paying for just the services used has become quite popular. The features within the Azure Synapse Analytics Pricing structure also provide the choice between serverless and reserved capacity. The user organization needs to make a choice depending on the need for flexibility or predictive analytics. The Synapse Analytics by Azure is also endowed with Apache Spark. It is good for the support it provides during big data analytics both in data batch and real-time streaming models.
Synapse Analytics Consultation: An EPC Group Approach
While organizations increasingly attempt to understand and predict the market pattern, customer preference trends, and other business variables, it becomes important to partner with the right consultation forms that provide round-the-clock support in using analytics services. The EPC Group is one such Azure consulting partner for Azure Synapse Analytics that is dedicated to helping their client’s business grow and expand by deriving the most benefit out of the data acquired.
As data is one of the key assets that provide an organization with the leverage required to compete with others, it is crucial to derive powerful insights from it in real-time. Over the years, the EPC Group has developed several customized training sessions on Power BI and Azure services to help the user companies achieve the following:-
- Successful implementation of Azure SQL Database
- Develop Data Lakes on Azure
- Aid the integration of the on-premise and cloud data sources.
- Unifying the data sources based on SaaS within Power BI.
As the features within the Azure Synapse Analytics price range are an extension of the Azure SQL Data Warehouse, the consultation process of the EPC Group can help the customer organizations, in increasing their productivity along with providing certain other benefits. These include the following:-
- Performing big data analytics through concurrent pipeline activities.
- Utilize several benefits while employing sustainable cost management.
- The activity execution speed is notably high among the cloud service providers.
- During highly variable workloads, the separate computing and storage methods significantly reduce the integration runtime hours.
- The Azure Security centre provides end-to-end security to the crucial data assets.
Along with being a gold-certified partner of Microsoft, the EPC Group provides round-the-clock support and a team of experts that remain dedicated to helping the customers achieve their desired organizational goals.
Conclusion:
Thus, through the above discussion on Azure Synapse Analytics Pricing and features, it can be well understood that It is a unique yet extremely beneficial service developed by Microsoft as it brings together cloud data warehouse features along with big data analytics into one platform. In a situation where an organization is tied between choosing a cloud data warehouse or a data lake, this service is the right choice to make.
It is designed to provide the beneficial features of two different services at a sustainable cost model. Along with all the advantages, Synapse Analytics has the ability to be natively paired with all the other Azure Data services.
Fill In The Form For – FREE 30 Mins Consulting For Azure Synapse Analytics
