SQL Azure import slow, hangs, but local import takes 3 minutes

Ugh, I hate answering my own question, but I figured out what the issue is. It appears to have to do with their new basic-standard-premium tiers (announced April 2014). The database imports to the old web-business levels no problem. Because the new tiers are built around throttling for "predictable performance," they make the high volume transactions of importing crazy slow.

I've yet to try this myself (spent 5 hours so far today waiting for a ~11GB Test database to import to an S3 sized Azure SQL database)...

But MS themselves mention that is due to them not assigning enough hamsters to run the wheel, and suggest using SQLPackage.exe direct from the command line as a workaround for slow imports. (see here: Azure SQL Database and Managed Instance Import/Export service takes a long time to import or export a database)

Interested to see what will happen, I can't wait this long to migrate the Prod DB in a few days' time so will give this tool a try!

UPDATE:

After waiting 4+ hours for my BACPAC file to import, it crashed.

Interestingly, the database from the crashed import was present in the Azure Portal, and I could see the DTU usage (S3 database) had been railed at 100% for almost the whole 4 hours...

So I wondered what happens if I set the DB performance ALL THE WAY UP in the import process, so I deleted the DB from crashed import and started it again, this time with the performance set to P15 (4000DTUs vs. 40 from an S2).

Guess what...

The import took just a little over 3 MINUTES

Turned the DB back down to S3 (what the client has spec'ed and is happy to pay for).

That's 4 hours of my life I'll never get back...