AWS RDS vs Azure vs Managed Services for SQL Server

AWS RDS vs Azure vs Managed Services for SQL Server 
We are evaluating pros and cons of different hosting solutions for SQL Server which best suits our business needs.

Our business needs

Our demand is very predictable seasonal demand.
We are very small and can’t afford dedicated team for managing database infrastructure.( No DBA Team )
Sky high expectation from Customers on availability and reliability for about 2 months in a year.
Few minutes of downtown during peak period can cause havoc to our business .
Fixed budget with very little wiggle room.

Our plan is to evaluate AWS SQL Server RDS, Azure RDS , Managed solutions from hosting provider.
Evaluate each option in these categories.
1. Performance and Reliability
2. Ability to scale up during peak loads
3. Cost ( Based on Network , Storage, Memory and CPU )
4. Operations Efficiency
5. Compliance

Infrastructure Requirements :
SQL Server Enterprise Edition since we use enterprise features
AlwaysOn Availability group for High Availability
Geo Replication or Multi Availability zone implementation for Cloud based databases
Ability to route Read/Write workloads
128 Gig RAM – Minimum
1 – 2 TB Storage with 500 Gigs of SSD for TempDB Database and High Volume Tables
Memory Optimized OLTP Support which needs SQL Server 2016 Edition
Ability to handle ~ 30 K IOPS during peak load

Amazon AWS SQL Server RDS
RDS Pricing Link :    AWS SQL Server RDS Pricing
http://www.ec2instances.info/rds/?selected=db.r3.8xlarge

	Price Per Hour
Memory Optimized Instances – Current Generation
db.r3.2xlarge	$5.810
db.r3.4xlarge	$11.404
db.r3.8xlarge	$19.271

	Price Per Hour
Memory Optimized Instances – Current Generation
db.r3.2xlarge	$11.620
db.r3.4xlarge	$22.808
db.r3.8xlarge	$38.542

AWS SQL Server RDS Configurations
On-Demand for SQL Server (License Included)
Multi-AZ Deployment
Region:  US East (N. Virginia)
Memory Optimized Instances – Current Generation Price Per Hour
RAM : 244 GB
10 Gigabit 32 vCPU
20,000 Provisioned IOPS

db.r3.8xlarge

244 GB

2 x 320 SSD

Intel Xeon E5-2670 v2 (Ivy Bridge)

32 vCPUs

10 Gigabit

Azure Pricing Calculator

Azure performance is measured in DTU. We have been collecting our performance metrics during load test. The following link provides lightweight utility to convert perfmon counters to Azure DTU’s.

Perfmon Counters to Azure DTU Conversion Utility Link : Perfmon to Azure DTU calculator

Understanding DTUs

Based on Microsoft definition : https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/sql-database-service-tiers/

The Database Transaction Unit (DTU) is the unit of measure in SQL Database that represents the relative power of databases based on a real-world measure: the database transaction. We took a set of operations that are typical for an online transaction processing (OLTP) request, and then measured how many transactions could be completed per second under fully loaded.
Azure RDS Pricing Calculator Link : Azure RDS Pricing Calculator

Azure Options for SQL Server

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/sql-database/

Basic

eDTUs PER POOL	MAX STORAGE PER POOL 1	MAX DBs PER POOL	MAX eDTUs PER DATABASE	PRICE 2
100	10 GB	200	5	~$149/mo
200	20 GB	400	5	~$298/mo
400	39 GB	400	5	~$595/mo
800	78 GB	400	5	~$1,198/mo
1200	117 GB	400	5	~$1,800/mo

Standard

eDTUs PER POOL	MAX STORAGE PER POOL 1	MAX DBs PER POOL	MAX eDTUs PER DATABASE	PRICE 2
100	100 GB	200	100	~$223/mo
200	200 GB	400	100	~$446/mo
400	400 GB	400	100	~$900/mo
800	800 GB	400	100	~$1,800/mo
1200	1.2 TB	400	100	~$2,701/mo

Premium

eDTUs PER POOL	MAX STORAGE PER POOL 1	MAX DBs PER POOL	MAX eDTUs PER DATABASE	PRICE 2
125	250 GB	50	125	~$697/mo
250	500 GB	50	250	~$1,399/mo
500	750 GB	50	500	~$2,790/mo
1000	750 GB	50	1000	~$5,580/mo
1500	750 GB	50	1000	~$8,370/mo