September 2025 Recap: Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Hello Azure Community, We are back with another round of updates for Azure Database for PostgreSQL! September is packed with powerful enhancements, from the public preview of PostgreSQL 18 to the general availability of Azure Confidential Computing, plus several new capabilities designed to boost performance, security, and developer experience. Stay tuned as we dive deeper into each of these feature updates. Before we dive into the feature highlights, let’s take a look at PGConf NYC 2025 highlights. PGConf NYC 2025 Highlights Our Postgres team was glad to be part of PGConf NYC 2025! As a Platinum sponsor, Microsoft joined the global PostgreSQL community for three days of sessions covering performance, extensibility, cloud, and AI, highlighted by Claire Giordano’s keynote, “What Microsoft is Building for Postgres—2025 in Review,” along with deep dives from core contributors and engineers. If you missed it, you can catch up here: Keynote slides: What Microsoft is Building for Postgres—2025 in Review by Claire Giordano at PGConf NYC 2025 Day 3 wrap-up: Key takeaways, highlights, and insights from the Azure Database for PostgreSQL team. Feature Highlights Near Zero Downtime scaling for High Availability (HA) enabled servers - Generally Available Azure Confidential Computing for Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Generally Available PostgreSQL 18 on Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Public Preview PostgreSQL Discovery & Assessment in Azure Migrate - Public Preview LlamaIndex Integration with Azure Postgres Latest Minor Versions GitHub Samples: Entra ID Token Refresh for PostgreSQL VS Code Extension for PostgreSQL enhancements Near Zero Downtime scaling for High Availability (HA) enabled servers – Generally Available Scaling compute for high availability (HA) enabled Azure Database for PostgreSQL servers just got faster. With Near Zero Downtime (NZD) scaling, compute changes such as vCore or tier modifications are now complete with minimal interruption, typically under 30 seconds using HA failover which maintains the connection string. The service provisions a new primary and standby instance with the updated configuration, synchronizes them with the existing setup, and performs a quick failover. This significantly reduces downtime compared to traditional scaling (which could take 2–10 minutes), improving overall availability. Visit our documentation for full details on how Near Zero Downtime scaling works. Azure Confidential Computing for Azure Database for PostgreSQL - Generally Available Azure Confidential Computing (ACC) Confidential Virtual Machines (CVMs) are now generally available for Azure Database for PostgreSQL. This capability brings hardware-based protection for data in use, ensuring your most sensitive information remains secure, even while being processed. With CVMs, your PostgreSQL flexible server instance runs inside a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), a secure, hardware-backed enclave that encrypts memory and isolates it from the host OS, hypervisor, and even Azure operators. This means your data enjoys end-to-end protection: at rest, in transit, and in use. Key Benefits: End-to-End Security: Data protected at rest, in transit, and in use Enhanced Privacy: Blocks unauthorized access during processing Compliance Ready: Meets strict security standards for regulated workloads Confidence in Cloud: Hardware-backed isolation for critical data Discover how Azure Confidential Computing enhances PostgreSQL check out the blog announcement. PostgreSQL 18 on Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Public Preview PostgreSQL 18 is now available in public preview on Azure Database for PostgreSQL, launched the same day as the PostgreSQL community release. PostgreSQL 18 introduces new performance, scalability, and developer productivity improvements. With this preview, you get early access to the latest community release on a fully managed Azure service. By running PostgreSQL 18 on flexible server, you can test application compatibility, explore new SQL and performance features, and prepare for upgrades well before general availability. This preview release gives you the opportunity to validate your workloads, extensions, and development pipelines in a dedicated preview environment while taking advantage of the security, high availability, and management capabilities in Azure. With PostgreSQL 18 in preview, you are among the first to experience the next generation of PostgreSQL on Azure, ensuring your applications are ready to adopt it when it reaches full general availability. To learn more about preview, read https://aka.ms/pg18 PostgreSQL Discovery & Assessment in Azure Migrate – Public Preview The PostgreSQL Discovery & Assessment feature is now available in public preview on Azure Migrate, making it easier to plan your migration journey to Azure. Migrating PostgreSQL workloads can be challenging without clear visibility into your existing environment. This feature solves that problem by delivering deep insights into on-premises PostgreSQL deployments, making migration planning easier and more informed. With this feature, you can discover PostgreSQL instances across your infrastructure, assess migration readiness and identify potential blockers, receive configuration-based SKU recommendations for Azure Database for PostgreSQL, and estimate costs for running your workloads in Azure all in one unified experience. Key Benefits: Comprehensive Visibility: Understand your on-prem PostgreSQL landscape Risk Reduction: Identify blockers before migration Optimized Planning: Get tailored SKU and cost insights Faster Migration: Streamlined assessment for a smooth transition Learn more in our blog: PostgreSQL Discovery and Assessment in Azure Migrate LlamaIndex Integration with Azure Postgres The support for native LlamaIndex integration is now available for Azure Database for PostgreSQL! This enhancement brings seamless connectivity between Azure Database for PostgreSQL and LlamaIndex, allowing developers to leverage Azure PostgreSQL as a secure and high-performance vector store for their AI agents and applications. Specifically, this package adds support for: Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) authentication when connecting to your Azure Database for PostgreSQL instances, and, DiskANN indexing algorithm when indexing your (semantic) vectors. This package makes it easy to connect LlamaIndex to your Azure PostgreSQL instances whether you're building intelligent agents, semantic search, or retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems. Explore the full guide here: https://aka.ms/azpg-llamaindex Latest Postgres minor versions: 17.6, 16.9, 15.13, 14.18 and 13.21 PostgreSQL minor versions 17.6, 16.9, 15.13, 14.18 and 13.21 are now supported by Azure Database for PostgreSQL. These minor version upgrades are automatically performed as part of the monthly planned maintenance in Azure Database for PostgreSQL. The upgrade automation ensures that your databases are always running the latest optimized versions without requiring manual intervention. This release fixes 3 security vulnerabilities and more than 55 bugs reported over the last several months. PostgreSQL minor versions are backward-compatible, so updates won’t affect your applications. For details about the release, see PostgreSQL community announcement. GitHub Samples: Entra ID Token Refresh for PostgreSQL We have introduced code samples for Entra ID token refresh, built specifically for Azure Database for PostgreSQL. These samples simplify implementing automatic token acquisition and refresh, helping you maintain secure, uninterrupted connectivity without manual intervention. By using these examples, you can keep sessions secure, prevent connection drops from expired tokens, and streamline integration with Azure Identity libraries for PostgreSQL workloads. What’s Included: Ready-to-use code snippets for token acquisition and refresh for Python and .NET Guidance for integrating with Azure Identity libraries Explore the samples repository on https://aka.ms/pg-access-token-refresh and start implementing it today. VS Code Extension for PostgreSQL enhancements A new version for VS Code Extension for PostgreSQL is out! This update introduces a Server Dashboard that provides high-level metadata and real-time performance metrics, along with historical insights for Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server. You can even use GitHub Copilot Chat to ask performance questions in natural language and receive diagnostic SQL queries in response. Additional enhancements include: A new keybinding for “Run Current Statement” in the Query Editor Support for dragging Object Explorer entities into the editor with properly quoted identifiers Ability to connect to databases via socket file paths Key fixes: Preserves the state of the Explain Analyze toolbar toggle Removes inadvertent logging of sensitive information from extension logs Stabilizes memory usage during long-running dashboard sessions Don’t forget to update to the latest version in the marketplace to take advantage of these enhancements and visit our GitHub repository to learn more about this month’s release. We’d love your feedback! Help us improve the Server Dashboard and other features by sharing your thoughts on GitHub . Azure Postgres Learning Bytes 🎓 Setting up logical replication between two servers This section will walk through setting up logical replication between two Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server instances. Logical replication replicates data changes from a source (publisher) server to a target (subscriber) server. Prerequisites PostgreSQL versions supported by logical replication (publisher/subscriber compatible). Network connectivity: subscriber must be able to connect to the publisher (VNet/NSG/firewall rules). A replication role on the publisher (or a role with REPLICATION privilege). Step 1: Configure Server Parameters on both publisher and subscriber: On Publisher: wal_level=logical max_worker_processes=16 max_replication_slots=10 max_wal_senders=10 track_commit_timestamp=on On Subscriber: wal_level=logical max_worker_processes=16 max_replication_slots=10 max_wal_senders=10 track_commit_timestamp=on max_worker_processes = 16 max_sync_workers_per_subscription = 6 autovacuum = OFF (during initial copy) max_wal_size = 64GB checkpoint_timeout = 3600 Step 2: Create Publication (Publisher) and alter role with replication privilege ALTER ROLE <replication_user> WITH REPLICATION; CREATE PUBLICATION pub FOR ALL TABLES; Step 3: Create Subscription (Subscriber) CREATE SUBSCRIPTION <subscription-name> CONNECTION 'host=<publisher_host> dbname=<db> user=<user> password=<pwd>' PUBLICATION <publication-name>;</publication-name></pwd></user></db></publisher_host></subscription-name> Step 4: Monitor Publisher: This shows active processes on the publisher, including replication workers. SELECT application_name, wait_event_type, wait_event, query, backend_type FROM pg_stat_activity WHERE state = 'active'; Subscriber: The ‘pg_stat_progress_copy’ table tracks the progress of the initial data copy for each table. SELECT * FROM pg_stat_progress_copy; To explore more details on how to get started with logical replication, visit our blog on Tuning logical replication for Azure Database for PostgreSQL. Conclusion That’s all for the September 2025 feature highlights! We remain committed to making Azure Database for PostgreSQL more powerful and secure with every release. Stay up to date on the latest enhancements by visiting our Azure Database for PostgreSQL blog updates link. Your feedback matters and helps us shape the future of PostgreSQL on Azure. If you have suggestions, ideas, or questions, we’d love to hear from you: https://aka.ms/pgfeedback. We look forward to sharing even more exciting capabilities in the coming months. Stay tuned!April 2025 Recap: Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server
Hello Azure Community, April has brought powerful capabilities to Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server, On-Demand backups are now Generally Available, a new Terraform version for our latest REST API has been released, the Public Preview of the MCP Server is now live, and there are also a few other updates that we are excited to share in this blog. Stay tuned as we dive into the details of these new features and how they can benefit you! Feature Highlights General Availability of On-Demand Backups Public Preview of Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server Additional Tuning Parameters in PG 17 Terraform resource released for latest REST API version General Availability of pg_cron extension in PG 17 General Availability of On-Demand Backups We are excited to announce General Availability of On-Demand backups for Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server. With this it becomes easier to streamline the process of backup management, including automated, scheduled storage volume snapshots encompassing the entire database instance and all associated transaction logs. On-demand backups provide you with the flexibility to initiate backups at any time, supplementing the existing scheduled backups. This capability is useful for scenarios such as application upgrades, schema modifications, or major version upgrades. For instance, before making schema changes, you can take a database backup, in an unlikely case, if you run into any issues, you can quickly restore (PITR) database back to a point before the schema changes were initiated. Similarly, during major version upgrades, on-demand backups provide a safety net, allowing you to revert to a previous state if anything goes wrong. In the absence of on-demand backup, the PITR could take much longer as it would need to take the last snapshot which could be 24 hours earlier and then replay the WAL. Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server already does on-demand backup behind the scenes for you and then deletes it when the upgrade is successful. Key Benefits: Immediate Backup Creation: Trigger full backups instantly. Cost Control: Delete on-demand backups when no longer needed. Improved Safety: Safeguard data before major changes or refreshes. Easy Access: Use via Azure Portal, CLI, ARM templates, or REST APIs. For more details and on how to get started, check out this announcement blog post. Create your first on-demand backup using the Azure portal or Azure CLI. Public Preview of Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a new and emerging open protocol designed to integrate AI models with the environments where your data and tools reside in a scalable, standardized, and secure manner. We are excited to introduce the Public Preview of MCP Server for Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server which enables your AI applications and models to talk to your data hosted in Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible servers according to the MCP standard. The MCP Server exposes a suite of tools including listing databases, tables, and schema information, reading and writing data, creating and dropping tables, listing Azure Database for PostgreSQL configurations, retrieving server parameter values, and more. You can either build custom AI apps and agents with MCP clients to invoke these capabilities or use AI tools like Claude Desktop and GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio Code to interact with your Azure PostgreSQL data simply by asking questions in plain English. For more details and demos on how to get started, check out this announcement blog post. Additional Tuning Parameters in PG17 We have now provided an expanded set of configuration parameters in Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server (V17) that allows you to modify and have greater control to optimize your database performance for unique workloads. You can now tune internal buffer settings like commit timestamp, multixact member and offset, notify, serializable, subtransaction, and transaction buffers, allowing you to better manage memory and concurrency in high-throughput environments. Additionally, you can also configure parallel append, plan cache mode, and event triggers that opens powerful optimization and automation opportunities for analytical workloads and custom logic execution. This gives you more control for memory intensive and high-concurrency applications, increased control over execution plans and allowing parallel execution of queries. To get started, all newly modifiable parameters are available now through the Azure portal, Azure CLI, and ARM templates, just like any other server configuration setting. To learn more, visit our Server Parameter Documentation. Terraform resource released for latest REST API version A new version of the Terraform resource for Azure Databases for PostgreSQL flexible server is now available, this brings several key improvements including the ability to easily revive dropped databases with geo-redundancy and customer-managed keys (Geo + CMK - Revive Dropped), seamless switchover of read replicas to a new site (Read Replicas - Switchover), improved connectivity through virtual endpoints for read replicas, and using on-demand backups for your servers. To get started with Terraform support, please follow this link: Deploy Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server with Terraform General Availability of pg_cron extension in PG 17 We’re excited to announce that the pg_cron extension is now supported in Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server major versions including PostgreSQL 17. This extension enables simple, time-based job scheduling directly within your database, making maintenance and automation tasks easier than ever. You can get started today by enabling the extension through the Azure portal or CLI. To learn more, please refer Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server list of extensions. Azure Postgres Learning Bytes 🎓 Setting up alerts for Azure Database PostgreSQL flexible server using Terraform Monitoring metrics and setting up alerts for your Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server instance is crucial for maintaining optimal performance and troubleshooting workload issues. By configuring alerts, you can track key metrics like CPU usage and storage etc. and receive notifications by creating an action group for your alert metrics. This guide will walk you through the process of setting up alerts using Terraform. First, create an instance of Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server (if not already created) Next, create a Terraform File and add these resources 'azurerm_monitor_action_group', 'azurerm_monitor_metric_alert' as shown below. resource "azurerm_monitor_action_group" "example" { name = "<action-group-name>" resource_group_name = "<rg-name>" short_name = "<short-name>" email_receiver { name = "sendalerts" email_address = "<youremail>" use_common_alert_schema = true } } resource "azurerm_monitor_metric_alert" "example" { name = "<alert-name>" resource_group_name = "<rg-name>" scopes = [data.azurerm_postgresql_flexible_server.demo.id] description = "Alert when CPU usage is high" severity = 3 frequency = "PT5M" window_size = "PT5M" enabled = true criteria { metric_namespace = "Microsoft.DBforPostgreSQL/flexibleServers" metric_name = "cpu_percent" aggregation = "Average" operator = "GreaterThan" threshold = 80 } action { action_group_id = azurerm_monitor_action_group.example.id } } 3. Run the terraform initialize, plan and apply commands to create an action group and attach a metric to the Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server instance. terraform init -upgrade terraform plan -out <file-name> terraform apply <file-name>.tfplan Note: This script assumes you have already created an Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server instance. To verify your alert, check the Azure portal under Monitoring -> Alerts -> Alert Rules tab. Conclusion That's a wrap for the April 2025 feature updates! Stay tuned for our Build announcements, as we have a lot of exciting updates and enhancements for Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server coming up this month. We’ve also published our Yearly Recap Blog, highlighting many improvements and announcements we’ve delivered over the past year. Take a look at our yearly recap blog here: What's new with Postgres at Microsoft, 2025 edition We are always dedicated to improving our service with new array of features, if you have any feedback or suggestions we would love to hear from you. 📢 Share your thoughts here: aka.ms/pgfeedback Thanks for being part of our growing Azure Postgres community.
