Managed might be the ticket then. I don't think it's too surprising to the user who configures a cache or file session backend that no database table is created. I think that's slightly less surprising than the status quo -- they configured a file session backend and when they run migrate they notice that a database table for sessions has been created, which might lead them to question if the session backend is working as intended. I'll pursue the meta option for now :).
If they start with the database backend, and switch at a later date to a non-database backend, then I'm comfortable to make it the user's responsibility to clean up the leftover database table, but were you suggesting if they start with a non-database backend and at some later stage decide to switch to a database backend it won't work?
Thanks for the help.
Nick