Microsoft recently announced that MariaDB will no longer be supported by Azure Database. Users won’t be able to create new MariaDB databases through the console or CLI any longer, and current instances will be decommissioned in 2025.
The cloud provider advises switching workloads from Azure Database for MariaDB to Azure Database for MySQL Flexible Server in order to secure ongoing support. Mark Ghanayem, a senior content developer at Microsoft, and Karla Escobar, a program manager, write the following in the article “What’s happening to Azure Database for MariaDB?”
We are making investments in Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server, our flagship product, which is better suited for workloads that are mission-critical. In comparison to Azure Database for MariaDB, Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server offers superior features, performance, an upgraded architecture, and additional controls to manage costs across all service tiers.
“Enterprise-ready, fully managed community MariaDB” was introduced in 2017. On the Azure platform, MariaDB joined PostgreSQL and MySQL as a managed SQL database. However, MariaDB 10.3, the most recent supported version, became obsolete in May. Last April, the Azure support team recognized the following in response to a user concerned about the absence of an upgrade option:
Up until September 2025, v10.3 on MariaDB will be supported. There won’t be any new MariaDB releases from us. Customers could start new MariaDB v10.3 servers up till further notice.
Escobar and Ghanayem provide the following justification for selecting the MySQL flexible server offer:
MariaDB offers resilience in a single availability zone, but Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible server zone-redundant deployment offers 99.99% availability with zonal-level resiliency. In contrast to MariaDB’s High Availability (HA) architecture, which lacks a passive hot standby to aid in recovery from zone failures, Flexible Server’s HA architecture deploys a warm standby with redundant compute and storage (with each site’s data saved in 3x copies).
MariaDB 10.11, the most recent long-term supported major version from the MariaDB community, is now supported by AWS RDS, therefore Azure is not the only cloud provider offering a managed service for MariaDB workloads. The MyRocks storage engine, IAM integration, delayed replication, and many major updates were brought to AWS last year. Instead, MariaDB Corporation offers SkySQL, a Google Cloud cloud database service geared toward enterprise workloads.
Azure plans to drop support for creating new MariaDB instances from the Azure portal on December 19th and from the CLI on March 19th. Databases currently in use must be retired by September 19, 2025. How to migrate to Azure Database for MySQL is covered in a post on the Azure Database for MySQL Blog.