Cloud native stateful application deployments are at an all-time high and poised to expand exponentially. Leading companies such as Microsoft have put a cascade of efforts into bringing SQL Server to Linux containers. Today enterprises are increasingly deploying these containerized data-intensive apps across hybrid cloud environments to optimize transactional performance and unleash real-time insights. The advantages of using containers and Kubernetes for hosting SQL Server databases are clear: containers provide the agility and portability and Kubernetes provides the necessary orchestration and automation.
However, deploying and scaling these business-critical SQL Server databases in production requires IT teams to adopt an enterprise-grade Kubernetes platform that meets certain critical requirements around performance, security, availability and total-cost-of-ownership (TCO) across hybrid cloud environments.
To help enterprises determine the platform best suited to run Microsoft SQL Server for their individual requirements, McKnight Consulting Group (MCG), an independent consulting firm, conducted a benchmark study of SQL Server 2019 running on the best possible configurations of the following Kubernetes platforms:
- Diamanti Enterprise Kubernetes Platform
- Amazon Web Services Elastic Kubernetes Service (AWS EKS)
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
The benchmark used a workload based on the well-recognized industry-standard TPC BenchmarkTM H (TPC-H).
Key Findings
Diamanti outperformed AWS and Azure in each configuration (TPC-H scale factor 100 and 300 with different sets of virtual users or streams). The results revealed Diamanti is ten times (10x) less expensive and four times (4x) faster while running Microsoft SQL server compared to Azure with Azure Ultra disks and thirteen times (13x) less expensive and six times (6x) faster compared to AWS Nitro with io2 disks.

The Diamanti platform is the industry’s most powerful purpose-built Kubernetes platform, spanning on-premises and public cloud environments. It is ideal for running mission-critical databases, where high performance, resiliency, availability, and security are required across hybrid cloud environments. It provides best-in-class data plane services and security measures to protect application data. For on-premises environments, the Diamanti platform offers Ultima offload, a pair of second-generation PCIe based I/O acceleration cards that offload networking and storage traffic, freeing up compute resources to power modern applications.
Download the full report to learn more about how Microsoft SQL Server performs exceptionally faster on Diamanti’s full-stack solution and has a lower TCO while outperforming a similarly built AWS and Azure infrastructure.
For more information:
- Register for the upcoming DevOps.com webinar: Comparing Microsoft SQL Server 2019 Performance Across Various Kubernetes Platforms
- Read our blogs on Microsoft SQL Server: