Today, we're announcing a series of updates to Azure Database for MySQL designed to improve failover performance, operational visibility, and version support for developers and DBAs. These enhancements help you build more resilient applications, manage maintenance with greater control, and stay current with the latest MySQL releases.
Enhanced failover performance with High-Availability in Azure Database for MySQL
We are excited to announce the Public Preview of dedicated Azure Standard Load Balancer (SLB) in for High availability (HA) enabled servers. With this feature, a dedicated standard load balancer (SLB) is added to HA configuration, enabling low-latency, high-throughput distribution of front-end traffic across backend servers. This enhancement improves failover performance and ensures more efficient handling of MySQL data traffic. By directly managing the MySQL data traffic path, the SLB eliminates the need for DNS changes during failover— reducing failover time by approximately 20 seconds.
- Improved failover performance - The SLB ensures automatic redirection of traffic to the current primary instance without relying on client-side DNS resolution, mitigating delays caused by DNS caching.
- Faster recovery during failover: Typical HA failover time is improved from 60–120 seconds to 40–100 seconds, resulting in a more responsive and resilient application experience.
Learn more: What's New in Azure Database for MySQL - Azure Database for MySQL - Flexible Server | Microsoft Lear...
Enhanced Maintenance experience with virtual canary, staged maintenance window and rollout progress view
We are excited to announce several enhancements to our maintenance experience; these enhancements aim to simplify the operation effort when dealing with our Azure MySQL maintenance.
- Virtual Canary – GA: Virtual Canary is intended for non-production workloads that want to validate updates early. Servers under this policy receive updates ahead of general availability and do not follow the standard update cadence — there’s no guaranteed 30-day interval and no 7-day advance notice. Burstable SKU servers are enrolled in the Virtual Canary policy by default.
- Staged Custom Maintenance Window – GA: Our custom maintenance feature has long been there and is one of the favorite features for our customers, staged custom maintenance features provide custom advanced control, you can assign the server to a batch (Batch 1 or Batch 2) to help stagger maintenance across environments like TEST and PROD:
- Maintenance rollout progress view – Public Preview: Each maintenance event includes a Tracking ID. Clicking this ID opens a detailed view of all servers in your subscription that are part of the same maintenance rollout. This gives you a consolidated overview across your fleet — no need to check each server individually or rely solely on email notifications.
MySQL 9.2 Innovation release support
We’re excited to announce support for MySQL 9.2, the latest innovation release from the MySQL community. This version brings a host of upstream improvements in performance, reliability, and new features.
For a detailed overview, check out the MySQL 9.2 Release Notes
Build Smarter Serverless Apps with Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Functions – Now with GA Support for Bindings
The shift toward serverless and event-driven architectures is reshaping how modern applications are built. Today’s mission-critical systems demand dynamic scalability to ensure high performance and availability—while keeping costs under control. But delivering on these expectations often introduces development complexity.
To help developers move faster and simplify their workflows, we’re excited to announce that input and output bindings for Azure Database for MySQL with Azure Functions are now generally available.
This native integration empowers you to build event-driven applications with minimal boilerplate code. Using bindings, you can seamlessly read from and write to MySQL databases in your preferred language—C#, Python, Java, JavaScript, or PowerShell—without managing connection logic or MySQL operations manually.
What This Means for You
- Faster development: Focus on business logic, not infrastructure.
- Cleaner code: Bindings abstract away repetitive database access patterns.
- Greater flexibility: Use bindings across multiple languages and trigger types.
Whether you're building real-time APIs, automating workflows, or modernizing legacy systems, this integration helps you unlock more value from your data—faster and more efficiently.
For more details, check out Azure Database for MySQL Bindings for Functions
MySQL Discovery and Assessment in Azure Migrate
We’re excited to announce the latest enhancements in the public release of MySQL Discovery and Assessment in Azure Migrate! The onboarding process has been significantly simplified—transitioning from a dual-appliance setup to a single appliance, making it much easier and more efficient for customers to get started.
Additionally, we've made improvements to the assessment feature where performance data is now displayed for all MySQL servers discovered, whether they are marked as 'Ready' or 'Not Ready'.
Additionally, we have added a feature where if any issues arise during the performance-based assessment, recommendations will now be made based on the server configuration.
For more details, check out Overview of Assessments for Migration to Azure Database for MySQL (preview) - Azure Migrate
Conclusion
These updates reflect our continued focus on delivering reliability, manageability, and compatibility in Azure Database for MySQL. Whether you're building resilient applications, managing fleets at scale, or staying current with MySQL versions, these new capabilities are designed to support your evolving needs.
We look forward to your feedback as you explore these enhancements and continue building with Azure MySQL.
To learn more about what's new with Flexible Server, 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.
If you have any suggestions for or queries about our service, please let us know by emailing us at AskAzureDBforMySQL@service.microsoft.com. Thank you!
Microsoft