Microsoft at PASS Data Community Summit 2025
Microsoft is excited to be back as the Sapphire Sponsor for this year’s PASS Data Community Summit, together with AMD. It’ll be a week packed with keynotes, learning pathways, sessions, breakfast, giveaways and more! Our experts and engineers will be there and ready to share all things SQL Server 2025, cover the latest from Azure SQL, Microsoft Fabric and more—delivered on a foundation of AMD-powered innovation. Whether your goals are modernizing for performance and AI readiness or building intelligent apps and agents, we’ll have you covered. Join us to “Connect, Share and Learn” alongside the rest of your peers at the PASS community. CVP of Azure Databases, Shireesh Thota, is back as the keynote speaker, and will be joined by leaders across Microsoft Data including Priya Sathy and Bob Ward—highlighting how Microsoft and AMD are shaping the future of data together. Join us on Day 2, Thursday, November 20 th . Come back and check as new sessions are added: Learning Pathways: Becoming Azure SQL DBA – High Availability and BCDR Dr. Dani Ljepava, Bob Ward, John Morehouse Learn how to evolve your Azure SQL DBA skills in the domain of High Availability (HA), Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) from the perspective of on-premises DBA’s. Becoming Azure SQL DBA – Security, Compliance, Threats, Connectivity Pam Lahoud, Joey Dantoni Evolve your Azure SQL DBA skills in the domain of security, compliance, authentication and connectivity, from the perspective of an on-premises DBA now supporting databases in Azure. Becoming Azure SQL DBA – Performance Monitoring, Tuning, and Alerting Erin Stellato, Pam Lahoud, Monica Morehouse (Rathbun) Extend your Azure SQL DBA skills in the domain of performance monitoring, tuning, and alerting from the perspective of on-premises DBA. Becoming Azure SQL DBA – Copilot and AI Davide Mauri, Erin Stellato Unlock the future of data productivity with a hands-on exploration of AI-powered Copilots! We’ll dive into Copilot in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), Microsoft Copilot in Azure with NL2SQL and SQL, and Copilot for SQL Databases in Microsoft Fabric. Becoming an Azure SQL DBA - New Opportunities for DBAs in Azure Bob Ward, Dr. Dani Ljepava, Erin Stellato, Pam Lahoud Explore new skill development opportunities as an Azure SQL DBA. Many traditional SQL Server DBA tasks have been partially or fully delegated to Microsoft, and this shift in responsibilities provides a great opportunity to invest in developing new cloud skills that will help you excel as an Azure SQL DBA champion. General Sessions Breakfast with the Microsoft Data Leadership Team JUST ADDED! Shireesh Thota, Priya Sathy, Bob Ward, Erin Stellato Get your day started early at PASS Data Community Summit with a free breakfast and a Q&A session with a panel of leaders across Microsoft hosted by Bob Ward. Tell us what is top of mind for you across SQL Server, Azure SQL, Microsoft Fabric and topics like AI. This is always one of the most popular sessions at the PASS Data Community Summit, so you won’t want to miss it! Lunch and Learn with Bob Ward JUST ADDED! Join us for a lunch and learn with Bob Ward as he covers all things SQL and dives into his latest release: SQL Server 2025 Unveiled: The AI-Ready Enterprise Database with Microsoft Fabric Integration. Space will be extremely limited, bring your lunch and join this exclusive session! Inside SQL Server 2025 Bob Ward Join Bob Ward and friends to go deep into the next major release of SQL Server, SQL Server 2025, the Enterprise AI-ready database. You will learn the fundamentals and a deep dive of all the new capabilities in the release so you can plan and make key decisions on when and how to upgrade. SQL Database in Fabric: The Unified Database for AI Apps and Analytics JUST ADDED! Amar Digamber Patil, Yo-Lei Chen, Basudep Sarkar Discover how SQL in Fabric brings transactional and analytical workloads together in one cloud-native database. In this session, we’ll show how developers and data teams can simplify AI-driven application development with near real-time insights and built-in AI, seamless OneLake integration, and end-to-end analytics—all in a single, unified experience. Building Scalable, Secure AI Apps with Azure SQL Hyperscale Build AI apps that run securely and scale with your needs with Azure SQL Database Hyperscale. We’ll cover native vector indexes for semantic search, read scale‑out for low‑latency RAG, using the model of your choice, from T‑SQL. Ecosystem sessions Smarter GitHub Copilot + SSMS 22 Erin Stellato Discover how GitHub Copilot is transforming the way you write T-SQL and optimize your SQL databases inside SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 22. In this session, we’ll showcase the newest SSMS 22 features alongside real-world demos of GitHub Copilot, highlighting how AI assistance can speed up query writing, reduce errors, and boost productivity. Booth Experiences What: Book signing "SQL Server 2025 Unveiled" with Bob Ward When: Wednesday, November 19th evening reception Where: Microsoft and AMD booth (#404) Join us as we celebrate the release of "SQL Server 2025 Unveiled" at the PASS Summit evening reception! Limited to the first 200 attendees. Now on demand! Get a jump start on your PASS experience. "The AI Opportunity: From Ground to Cloud" webinar is now available on demand! Get an early preview of the sessions at PASS Summit and a closer look into SQL Server 2025. Hosted by Redgate’s Kellyn Gorman and Bob Ward, sign up and watch today! --Exclusive Offer for PASS Attendees-- As a special offer from Microsoft, use the code AZURE150 to receive $150 off your 3-day conference pass. Don’t miss this opportunity to connect, grow, and learn with the community. Register todayEntra Authentication in Arc enabled SQL Server 2025 - Windows
This blog will discuss the newly added, “Primary managed identity” in Arc enabled SQL Server 2025 by Microsoft Entra, which enables credential free authentication for both inbound & outbound communications. The Primary Managed Identity pertains to the identity of the Arc machine, which is registered by the Arc machine agent with Microsoft Entra. SQL Server can utilize this identity to authenticate with other Azure services. Associate a “Primary managed identity” to the SQL Server: Arc enabled windows machine, have a managed identity created for them. SQL Server 2025 can now use that identity to establish a trust relationship with Microsoft Entra. You can attach this identity to SQL Server by opting for it from the Azure portal. To activate the primary managed identity from Azure, as a pre-requisite, you need the latest Azure extension for SQL Server release. Note: We keep improving the Azure portal user experience and you might see slight differences depending on when you are reading this blog post. A primary managed identity is necessary for both outbound and inbound communication. Alternatively, you can just Arc enable the host machine and use the manual set up for the managed identity feature. This eliminates the need for the Azure extension for SQL Server, which you must uninstall. With this approach you will not be able to use the Azure portal for Microsoft Entra features. Outbound Communication: You can now use this Primary managed identity to connect the SQL Server 2025 to Azure resources like Azure Storage and Azure Key vault. Follow this to set up the backup to an Azure storage URL, and EKM with Azure key vault. Inbound Communication: You can also use the primary managed identity to create Entra based users and logins to connect to SQL Server 2025. For this you will need to grant these graph API permissions. User.Read.All, GroupMember.Read.All, and Application.Read.All Read more here for the details and limitations on this managed identity setup. For Arc-enabled SQL Server 2025, we recommend using managed identity as it is more secure than the credential-based setup from SQL Server 2022. Although you can still register your SQL Server 2025 with Microsoft Entra for inbound communication only, the Azure portal for SQL 2025 will no longer support the App-registration method. Next steps: To proceed, please obtain your SQL Server 2025 from here to explore all the SQL Server 2025 features available in the public preview version. If you are using an antivirus software, please refer to these instructions.
Single pane of glass to look at all of my SQL Servers
I just got back from SQL Pass Summit 2024 and I was told that I could ARC enable all of my SQL Servers so I would have a single pane of glass to view and scan logs, configurations, view best practices etc. Unfortunately, when I got home, I realized that since we have SQL Servers on Azure VMs we can't use Azure ARC to manage them. Unsupported configurations Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server doesn't currently support the following configurations: ... Multiple instances of SQL Server installed on the same host operating system with the same instance name. SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machines. An Always On availability group where one or more replicas is on a failover cluster instance. Since all our Azure VMs have the SQL Agent installed how can we unify our management experience in Azure?SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc, now assists in selecting the best Azure SQL target
To make the SQL Server migration journey more efficient, the SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc can now help our customers assess the readiness of their SQL Server workloads for Azure SQL migration and assist them in choosing the most suitable Azure SQL configuration.
Arc enabled Azure migration & modernization journey
This blog explains how SQL Servers connected to Azure Arc can make the migration and modernization process to Azure SQL easier and faster. SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc allows SQL Server instances hosted outside of Azure to access Azure services. This results in operational efficiencies and cost reductions. Moreover, it also offers a simple migration path to Azure with minimal or no downtime.
The Bridge - How Azure Arc brings cloud innovation to SQL Server anywhere
The ability to effectively manage data is more critical than ever and increasingly complex — with organizations hosting data on-premises, at the edge, and across multiple clouds. With the increasing need for businesses to maximize existing resources, one thing is clear: Today’s organizations need a bridge to bring cloud innovation to data estate across all environments – a consistent and efficient experience for managing, governing and security data. That bridge is Microsoft’s Azure Arc.
