Ignite 2022: Announcing new features in Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server

With Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server, we’re on a mission to build an intuitive and fully managed MySQL database service that is easy to onboard and effortless to operate. We designed the service to provide you with maximum control, flexibility, and the ability to customise your MySQL database configuration to easily achieve your performance, scale, high availability, and cost optimization goals. 

Today, we are announcing a set of new and exciting features that further improve the service’s availability, performance, security, management, and developer experiences:

Public preview: Enjoy worry free IO management with Autoscale IOPS

With autoscale IO, you no longer need to pre-provision IOPS and pay for resources that you aren’t fully using. Enabling this feature allows your instance of Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server to automatically scale IO up and down depending on workload trends, which is best for unpredictable or burstable workloads. With autoscale IO, you only pay for the amount of IOPS that you use, providing possible cost savings.

Learn more: Microsoft Learn Documentation | Detailed blog with demo video coming soon!

Public preview: Simplify permission management with Azure Active Directory (AAD) authentication

The Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) authentication feature allows you to connect to Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server using identities defined in Azure AD. With Azure AD authentication, you can manage database user identities and other Microsoft services in a central location, which simplifies the overall management of permissions.  

Learn more: Microsoft Learn Documentation Concepts | Tutorial

Public preview: Encrypt your data with customer-managed keys (CMK) 

Data encryption with customer-managed keys (CMK) for Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server allows you to bring your own key (BYOK) for data protection at rest. You can use this feature to implement separation of duties for managing keys and data. Additionally, you can centrally manage and organise keys using Azure Key Vault. With customer-managed encryption, you're responsible for, and in full control of, a key's lifecycle, key usage permissions, and auditing operations on keys. 

Learn more: Microsoft Learn Documentation Concepts | Tutorial

General availability: Create in-region read replicas for HA enabled flexible servers

The read replica feature allows you to replicate data from an Azure Database for MySQL-Flexible server to a read-only server (a replica) and helps to improve the performance and scale of read-intensive workloads. With this feature, you can replicate the source server to up to 10 replicas. This functionality is now extended to support HA (High Availability) enabled servers within the same region. 

Learn more: Microsoft Learn Documentation | Demo video

Public preview: Perform major version upgrade with minimal efforts

The major version upgrade feature allows you to perform in-place upgrades of existing instances of Azure Database for MySQL - Flexible Server from MySQL 5.7 to MySQL 8.0 with the click of a button, without any data movement or the need to make any application connection string changes. Take advantage of this functionality to efficiently perform major version upgrades on your instances of Azure Database for MySQL - Flexible Server and leverage the latest that MySQL 8.0 has to offer. 

Learn more: Microsoft Learn Documentation | Detailed blog with demo video coming soon!

Public preview: MySQL extension for Azure Data Studio  

When you’re working with multiple databases across data platforms and cloud deployment models, being able to perform the most common tasks on all your databases using a single tool enhances your productivity severalfold. With the MySQL extension for Azure Data Studio, you can now connect to and modify MySQL databases along with your other databases, taking advantage of the modern editor experience and capabilities in Azure Data Studio, such as IntelliSense, code snippets, source control integration, native Jupyter Notebooks, an integrated terminal, and more. Use this new tooling with any MySQL server hosted on-premises, on virtual machines, on managed MySQL in other clouds, and on Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server.    

Learn more: Microsoft Learn Documentation | Detailed blog and demo video coming soon!

Conclusion

We are investing heavily to continuously improve Azure Database for MySQL - Flexible Server and make it the best choice for running MySQL open-source database in the cloud. With our legacy offering Azure Database for MySQL - Single Server on the road to retirement by 16 September 2024 (Learn more: Blog | Watch), there’s no better time to consider moving your Single Server instances to Flexible Server and enjoy the following added benefits:

• More ways to optimize costs, including support for burstable tier compute options. 
• Improved performance for business-critical production workloads that require low latency, high concurrency, fast failover, and high scalability. 
• Improved uptime with the ability to configure a hot standby on the same or a different zone, and a one-hour time window for planned server maintenance. 

To learn more on what's new with Flexible Server, see What's new in Azure Database for MySQL - Flexible Server.

We look forward to hearing from you about your experience using the Azure Database for MySQL- Flexible Server and its new features. Please reach out to us at AskAzureDBforMySQL@service.microsoft.com with your feedback, suggestions, questions or queries!