January 2026 Recap: Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Hello Azure Community, We’re kicking off the year with important updates for Azure Database for PostgreSQL. From Premium SSD v2 features now available in public preview to REST API feature updates across developer tools, this blog highlights what’s new and what’s coming. Terraform Adds Support for PostgreSQL 18 – Generally Available Ansible module update - Generally Available Achieving Zonal Resiliency with Azure CLI - Generally Available SDKs Released : Go, Java, JavaScript, .NET and Python – Generally Available What’s New in Premium SSD v2 - Public Preview Latest PostgreSQL minor versions January 2026 Maintenance Release Notes Terraform Adds Support for PostgreSQL 18 Azure Database for PostgreSQL now provides support for PostgreSQL 18 which allows customers to create new servers with PostgreSQL 18 version and upgrade existing ones using Terraform. This update makes it easier to adopt PostgreSQL 18 on Azure while managing both provisioning and upgrades through consistent Terraform workflows. Learn more about using the new terraform resource Ansible Module Update A new Ansible module is now available with support for the latest GA REST API features, enabling customers to automate provisioning and management of Azure Database for PostgreSQL resources. This includes support for Elastic Clusters provisioning, deployment of PostgreSQL instances with PostgreSQL 18, and broader adoption of newly released Azure Database for PostgreSQL capabilities through Ansible. Learn more about using Ansible module with latest REST API features Achieve zonal resiliency with Azure CLI We have released updates to the Azure CLI that allow users to enable zone‑redundant high availability (HA) by default using a new --zonal-resiliency parameter. This parameter can be set to enabled or disabled. When --zonal-resiliency is enabled, the service provisions a standby server in a different availability zone than the primary, providing protection against zonal failures. If zonal capacity is not available in the selected region, you can use the --allow-same-zone flag to provision the standby in the same zone as the primary. Azure CLI commands: az postgres flexible-server update --resource-group <resource_group> --name <server> --zonal-resiliency enabled --allow-same-zone</server></resource_group> az postgres flexible-server update --resource-group <resource_group> --name <server> --zonal-resiliency Disabled</server></resource_group> az postgres flexible-server create --resource-group <resource_group> --name <server> --zonal-resiliency enabled --allow-same-zone</server></resource_group> Learn more about how to configure high availability on Azure Database for PostgreSQL. SDKs Released : Go, Java, JavaScript, .NET and Python We have released updated SDKs for Go, Java, JavaScript, .NET, and Python, built on the latest GA REST API (2025‑08‑01). These SDKs enable developers to programmatically provision, configure, and manage Azure Database for PostgreSQL resources using stable, production‑ready APIs. It also adds the ability to set a default database name for Elastic Clusters, simplifying cluster provisioning workflows, support for PostgreSQL 18. To improve developer experience and reliability, operation IDs have been renamed for clearer navigation, and HTTP response codes have been corrected so automation scripts and retries behave as expected. Learn More about .NET SDK Learn more about Go SDK Learn more about Java SDK Learn more about Javascript SDK Learn more about Python SDK What’s New in Premium SSD v2: Public Preview Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server now supports a broader set of resiliency and lifecycle management capabilities on Premium SSD v2, enabling production‑grade PostgreSQL deployments with improved durability, availability, and operational flexibility. In this preview, customers can use High Availability (same‑zone and zone‑redundant), geo‑redundant backups, in‑region and geo read replicas, geo‑disaster recovery (Geo‑DR), and Major Version Upgrades on SSDv2‑backed servers, providing both zonal and regional resiliency options for mission‑critical PostgreSQL workloads. These capabilities help protect data across availability zones and regions, support compliance and disaster‑recovery requirements, and simplify database lifecycle operations. Premium SSD v2 enhances these resiliency workflows with higher and independently scalable IOPS and throughput, predictable low latency, and decoupled scaling of performance and capacity. Customers can provision and adjust storage performance without over‑allocating disk size, enabling more efficient capacity planning while sustaining high‑throughput, low‑latency workloads. When combined with zone‑resilient HA and cross‑region data protection, SSDv2 provides a consistent storage foundation for PostgreSQL upgrades, failover, backup, and recovery scenarios. These capabilities are being expanded incrementally across regions as the service progresses toward general availability For more details, see Premium SSDv2 Latest Postgres minor versions: 18.1, 17.7, 16.11, 15.15, 14.20, 13.23 Azure Database for PostgreSQL now supports the latest PostgreSQL minor versions: 18.1, 17.7, 16.11, 15.15, 14.20, and 13.23. These updates are applied automatically during planned maintenance windows, ensuring your databases stay up to date with critical security fixes and reliability improvements no manual action required. This release includes two security fixes and over 50 bug fixes across indexing, replication, partitioning, memory handling, and more. PostgreSQL 13.23 is the final community release for version 13, which has now reached end-of-life (EOL). Customers still using PostgreSQL 13 on Azure should review their upgrade options and refer to Azure’s Extended Support policy for more details. For details about the minor release, see PostgreSQL community announcement. January 2026 Maintenance Release Notes We’re excited to announce the January 2026 version of Azure Database for PostgreSQL maintenance updates. This new version delivers major engine updates, new extensions, Elastic clusters enhancements, performance improvements, and critical reliability fixes. This release introduces expands migration and Fabric mirroring support, and adds powerful analytics, security, and observability capabilities across the service. Customers also benefit from improved Query Store performance, new WAL metrics, enhanced networking flexibility, and multiple Elastic clusters enhancements. All new servers are automatically onboarded beginning January 20, 2026, with existing servers upgraded during their next scheduled maintenance. For a complete list of features, improvements, and resolved issues, see the full release notes here. Azure Postgres Learning Bytes Managing Replication Lag with Debezium Change Data Capture (CDC) enables real‑time integrations by streaming row‑level changes from OLTP systems like PostgreSQL into event streams, data lakes, caches, and microservices. In a typical CDC pipeline, Debezium captures changes from PostgreSQL and streams them into Kafka with minimal latency. However, during large bulk updates that affect millions of rows, replication lag can spike significantly, impacting replication lag. This learning byte walks through how to detect and mitigate replication lag in Azure Database for PostgreSQL when using Debezium. Detect Replication Lag: Start by identifying where lag is building up in the system. Monitor replication slots and lag: Use the following query to inspect active replication slots and measure how far behind they are relative to the current WAL position: SELECT slot_name, active_pid, confirmed_flush_lsn, restart_lsn, pg_current_wal_lsn(), pg_size_pretty( ( pg_current_wal_lsn() - confirmed_flush_lsn ) ) AS lsn_distance FROM pg_replication_slots; Check WAL sender backend status: Verify whether WAL sender processes are stalled due to decoding or I/O waits: SELECT pid, backend_type, application_name, wait_event FROM pg_stat_activity WHERE backend_type = 'walsender' ORDER BY backend_start; Inspect spill activity : High spill activity indicates memory pressure during logical decoding and may contribute to lag. Large values for spill_bytes or spill_count suggest the need to increase logical_decoding_work_mem, reduce transaction sizes, or tune Debezium connector throughput. SELECT slot_name, spill_txns, spill_count, pg_size_pretty(spill_bytes) AS spill_bytes, total_txns, pg_size_pretty(total_bytes) AS total_bytes, stats_reset FROM pg_stat_replication_slots; Fix Replication Lag: Database and infrastructure tuning Reduce unnecessary overhead and ensure compute, memory, and storage resources are appropriately scaled to handle peak workloads. Connector level tuning Adjust Debezium configuration to keep pace with PostgreSQL WAL generation and Kafka throughput. This includes tuning batch sizes, poll intervals, and throughput settings to balance latency and stability. To learn more about diagnosing and resolving CDC performance issues, read the full blog: Performance Tuning for CDC: Managing Replication Lag in Azure Database for PostgreSQL with DebeziumSeptember 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!
