August 2025 Recap: Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Hello Azure Community, August was an exciting month for Azure Database for PostgreSQL! We have introduced updates that make your experience smarter and more secure. From simplified Entra ID group login to integrations with LangChain and LangGraph, these updates help with improving access control and seamless integration for your AI agents and applications. Stay tuned as we dive deeper into each of these feature updates. Feature Highlights Enhanced Performance recommendations for Azure Advisor - Generally Available Entra-ID group login using user credentials - Public Preview New Region Buildout: Austria East LangChain and LangGraph connector Active-Active Replication Guide Enhanced Performance recommendations for Azure Advisor - Generally Available Azure Advisor now offers enhanced recommendations to further optimize PostgreSQL server performance, security, and resource management. These key updates are as follows: Index Scan Insights: Detection and recommendations for disabled index and index-only scans to improve query efficiency. Audit Logging Review: Identification of excessive logging via the pgaudit.log parameter, with guidance to reduce overhead. Statistics Monitoring: Alerts on server statistics resets and suggestions to restore accurate performance tracking. Storage Optimization: Analysis of storage usage with recommendations to enable the Storage Autogrow feature for seamless scaling. Connection Management: Evaluation of workloads for short-lived connections and frequent connectivity errors, with recommendations to implement PgBouncer for efficient connection pooling. These enhancements aim to provide deeper operational insights and support proactive performance tuning for PostgreSQL workloads. For more details read the Performance recommendations documentation. Entra-ID group login using user credentials - Public Preview The public preview for Entra-ID group login using user credentials is now available. This feature simplifies user management and improves security within the Azure Database for PostgreSQL. This allows administrators and users to benefit from a more streamlined process like: Changes in Entra-ID group memberships are synchronized on a periodic 30min basis. This scheduled syncing ensures that access controls are kept up to date, simplifying user management and maintaining current permissions. Users can log in with their own credentials, streamlining authentication, and improving auditing and access management for PostgreSQL environments. As organizations continue to adopt cloud-native identity solutions, this update represents a major improvement in operational efficiency and security for PostgreSQL database environments. New Region Buildout: Austria East New region rollout! Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server is now available in Austria East, giving customers in and around the region lower latency and data residency options. This continues our mission to bring Azure PostgreSQL closer to where you build and run your apps. For the full list of regions visit: Azure Database for PostgreSQL Regions. LangChain and LangGraph connector We are excited to announce that native LangChain & LangGraph support is now available for Azure Database for PostgreSQL! This integration brings native support for Azure Database for PostgreSQL into LangChain or LangGraph workflows, enabling developers to use Azure PostgreSQL as a secure and high-performance vector store and memory 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 LangChain to your Azure-hosted PostgreSQL instances whether you're building intelligent agents, semantic search, or retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems. Read more at https://aka.ms/azpg-agent-frameworks Active-Active Replication Guide We have published a new blog article that guides you through setting up active-active replication in Azure Database for PostgreSQL using the pglogical extension. This walkthrough covers the fundamentals of active-active replication, key prerequisites for enabling bi-directional replication, and step-by-step demo scripts for the setup. It also compares native and pglogical approaches helping you choose the right strategy for high availability, and multi-region resilience in production environments. Read more about the active-active replication guide on this blog. Azure Postgres Learning Bytes 🎓 Enabling Zone-Redundant High Availability for Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server Using APIs. High availability (HA) is essential for ensuring business continuity and minimizing downtime in production workloads. With Zone-Redundant HA, Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server automatically provisions a standby replica in a different availability zone, providing stronger fault tolerance against zone-level failures. This section will guide you on how to enable Zone-Redundant HA using REST APIs. Using REST APIs gives you clear visibility into the exact requests and responses, making it easier to debug issues and validate configurations as you go. You can use any REST API client tool of your choice to perform these operations including Postman, Thunder Client (VS Code extension), curl, etc. to send requests and inspect the results directly. Before enabling Zone-Redundant HA, make sure your server is on the General Purpose or Memory Optimized tier and deployed in a region that supports it. If your server is currently using Same-Zone HA, you must first disable it before switching to Zone-Redundant. Steps to Enable Zone-Redundant HA: Get an ARM Bearer token: Run this in a terminal where Azure CLI is signed in (or use Azure Cloud Shell) az account get-access-token --resource https://management.azure.com --query accessToken -o tsv Paste token in your API client tool Authorization: `Bearer <token>` </token> Inspect the server (GET) using the following URL: https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/{{subscriptionId}}/resourceGroups/{{resourceGroup}}/providers/Microsoft.DBforPostgreSQL/flexibleServers/{{serverName}}?api-version={{apiVersion}} In the JSON response, note: sku.tier → must be 'GeneralPurpose' or 'MemoryOptimized' properties.availabilityZone → '1' or '2' or '3' (depends which availability zone that was specified while creating the primary server, it will be selected by system if the availability zone is not specified) properties.highAvailability.mode → 'Disabled', 'SameZone', or 'ZoneRedundant' properties.highAvailability.state → e.g. 'NotEnabled','CreatingStandby', 'Healthy' If HA is currently SameZone, disable it first (PATCH) using API. Use the same URL in Step 3, in the Body header insert: { "properties": { "highAvailability": { "mode": "Disabled" } } } Enable Zone Redundant HA (PATCH) using API: Use the same URL in Step 3, in the Body header insert: { "properties": { "highAvailability": { "mode": "ZoneRedundant" } } } Monitor until HA is Healthy: Re-run the GET from Step 3 every 30-60 seconds until you see: "highAvailability": { "mode": "ZoneRedundant", "state": "Healthy" } Conclusion That’s all for our August 2025 feature updates! We’re committed to making Azure Database for PostgreSQL better with every release, and your feedback plays a key role in shaping what’s next. 💬 Have ideas, questions, or suggestions? Share them with us: https://aka.ms/pgfeedback 📢 Want to stay informed about the latest features and best practices? Follow us here for the latest announcements, feature releases, and best practices: Azure Database for PostgreSQL Blog More exciting improvements are on the way—stay tuned for what’s coming next!
