We're excited to share a summary of the Azure Database for MySQL announcements from last month, as well as the latest roadmap of upcoming features!
February 2025 Live Webinar
These updates and the latest roadmap are also covered in our Monthly Live Webinar on YouTube (Click here to subscribe to our YouTube channel!), which streams the second Wednesday of every month, at 7:30 AM Pacific time. Below is a link to the session recording of the live webinar we delivered last week:
January 2025 updates and announcements
Virtual Canary Maintenance for Azure Database for MySQL (Public Preview)
We are thrilled to announce the Public Preview of Virtual Canary Maintenance for Azure Database for MySQL. This innovative feature provides you with early access to maintenance updates, allowing you to
- Proactively validate workloads against upcoming Azure Database for MySQL features.
- Identify and address potential compatibility issues before updates are broadly deployed.
- Provide feedback to shape future releases.
Virtual Canary Maintenance is ideal for non-production environments, such as those on Burstable tier servers used for testing and staging. It helps identify and resolve issues early, ensuring stability for production environments.
Learn more: Documentation | Announcement blog | Demo video
Azure Database for MySQL – Business Critical service tier is zone-resilient by default
You can now enjoy the highest level of availability against infrastructure failures within an availability zone, at no additional cost, for your mission-critical workloads on the Business-Critical service tier! Regardless of whether your flexible servers are enabled with High Availability (HA), your server data and log files will be hosted in zone-redundant storage by default. While zone-redundant HA-enabled servers continue to benefit from a 99.99% uptime SLA from the built-in zonal redundancy and hot standby, same-zone HA-enabled servers and non-HA servers will also be able to recover quickly from zonal outages using zone-redundant backups. This enhancement will be applicable to all new servers provisioned in the Business-Critical service tier.
Updates to the Accelerated Logs feature
Accelerated Logs, designed for mission-critical workloads and available with the Business-Critical service tier, is a feature that offers up to two times (2x) increase in throughput for your applications at no additional cost. In the past month, we've released two significant updates to the feature:
- The feature is now enabled by default for all new Business-Critical servers. Existing Business-Critical servers can also enable Accelerated Logs through the Azure portal.
- The feature is now supported on Business-Critical servers that have Customer Managed Keys (CMK) enabled.
Learn more: Documentation
Server parameter lower_case_table_names is now supported for MySQL 8.0+ (Private Preview)
Azure Database for MySQL now offers support for the lower_case_table_names server parameter in private preview for servers running on MySQL 8.0 and above. Customers can configure this parameter with a value of 1 or 2 during server creation. To participate in the private preview, please open a support ticket for assistance.
Latest feature roadmap
|
Feature |
Description |
Release status |
Coming soon! |
|
MySQL Discovery & Assessment in Azure Migrate |
With this functionality, you can use Azure Migrate to discover MySQL servers in your environment, assess them by identifying their compatibility for moving to Azure Database for MySQL, and receive compute and storage SKU recommendations along with their costs. Learn more. |
Private Preview |
Public Preview in Q1 CY25 |
|
Unified migration experience with Azure DMS
|
Azure Database Migration Service (DMS) now provides a unified migration experience for both logical and physical migrations. This enhancement combines the seamless migration capabilities of Azure DMS with the ability of Azure Database for MySQL Import to migrate MySQL workloads on-premises or on VMs using physical backup files from the source servers. |
- |
Public Preview in Q1 CY25 |
|
Azure DB for MySQL bindings in Azure Functions |
With this feature, you can easily create event-driven applications using native support for input and output bindings within Azure Functions. This means you can read data from an Azure DB for MySQL database into a function and save data back to the database, allowing you to do more with your data while simplifying development by reducing the amount of code required. Learn more. |
Public Preview |
General Availability |
|
Error Logs (in Server Logs) |
This feature allows you to maintain MySQL error log files under Server logs and download them for up to seven days. These error logs can help you efficiently identify and troubleshoot performance and reliability issues, and proactively detect and respond to unauthorized access attempts, failed login attempts, and other security-related events. Learn more. |
Public Preview |
General Availability
|
|
Virtual Canary |
Virtual Canary Maintenance provides you with early access to maintenance updates, allowing you to validate workload compatibility with upcoming Azure Database for MySQL enhancements and contribute to the continuous improvement of the service. Learn more. |
Public Preview |
General Availability in Q2 CY25 |
|
Near-zero downtime maintenance for HA servers
|
This feature is designed to substantially reduce maintenance downtime for HA-enabled servers, ensuring that in most cases, maintenance downtime is expected to be between 40 to 60 seconds. This capability is pivotal for businesses that demand high availability and minimal interruption in their database operations. Learn more. |
Public Preview |
General Availability in Q2 CY25
|
|
Support for MySQL 9.1 Innovation Release and MySQL 8.4 LTS |
Azure Database for MySQL now supports two new MySQL versions: MySQL 9.1 (Innovation Release) and MySQL 8.4 (LTS). With MySQL 9.1, you get cutting-edge innovations that push the boundaries of what's possible, while MySQL 8.4 offers long-term stability and reliability for your mission-critical applications. Learn more. |
Public Preview |
General Availability |
*The roadmap features and dates are tentative and subject to change. Please stay tuned for continuous updates.
Conclusion
As we continue to work on new features and functionalities, your feedback is very critical for our improvement. If you wish to enroll in Private Preview for any of the above features, or if you have any suggestions for or queries about our service, email us at AskAzureDBforMySQL@service.microsoft.com.
To learn more about what's new with Azure Database for MySQL, see What's new in Azure Database for MySQL - Flexible Server. Stay tuned for more updates and announcements by following us on social media: YouTube | LinkedIn | X.
Microsoft