In case you missed it: here is a summary of Azure SQL announcements for February 2025:

• Retirement of Azure Data Studio: ADS will remain supported until February 28, 2026, giving developers ample time to transition. This decision aligns with our commitment to simplifying SQL development by consolidating efforts on Visual Studio Code (VS Code) with the MSSQL extension, a powerful and versatile tool designed for modern developers.
• Introducing the Enhanced Azure SQL Database Free Offer: Now Generally Available; the new Azure SQL Database free offer. Now, each Azure subscription includes not just one, but 10 serverless databases. Each database comes with a complimentary allocation of 100,000 vCore seconds of compute, 32 GB of data storage, and 32 GB of backup storage every month, for the lifetime of your subscription.
• Azure SQL Managed Instance Zone Redundancy: On February 28, 2025, a blog post highlighted the availability of Zone Redundancy (ZR) for Azure SQL Managed Instance, offering additional protection against certain types of failures. This article explores when to choose Zone Redundancy (ZR), compares it to Failover Groups, discusses key considerations for ZR, and outlines strategies to address its challenges.
• Azure SQL Database reliability with accelerated database recovery in TempDB: ADR is enabled in Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance for all user databases, reducing downtime during planned and unplanned failovers, and avoiding application outages due to long transaction rollbacks. Customers running SQL Server 2019 and SQL Server 2022 in Azure VMs or on-premises can enable ADR to enjoy the same benefits. ADR is now enabled in the TempDB database.
• Availability metric for Azure SQL DB is now generally available: The general availability of the Availability metric for Azure SQL Database allows users to monitor SLA-compliant availability at a granular level. This new metric is emitted at a 1-minute frequency and stores data for up to 93 days, with a typical latency of less than three minutes to display availability. Users can visualize this metric in Azure Monitor and set up alerts.
• Native Windows Principals for Azure SQL Managed Instance: General availability for Native Windows Principals for Azure SQL Managed Instance. This capability simplifies the migration to Azure SQL Managed Instance and unblock the migration of legacy applications that are tied to windows logins.
• Exciting New T-SQL Features: Public preview of three new T-SQL features including Regular Expressions (Regex) support, Fuzzy string-matching, and bigint support in DATEADD. These enhancements are now available in Azure SQL Database and SQL Database in Microsoft Fabric, offering developers more flexibility, efficiency, and precision in their data operations. They will also help simplify complex operations that previously required workarounds or external processing.
• Improving the Conversion to Hyperscale: The latest improvement in the Azure SQL Database conversion process to Hyperscale. This update, now available in public preview, streamlines the database conversion process, reducing downtime and offering greater control and visibility to our customers.
• SQL Migration assessments now include Next-gen General Purpose Azure SQL MI: Announcing the inclusion of the Next-gen General Purpose service tier in target recommendation for assessments of SQL Server instance migration to Azure SQL Managed Instance. The Next-gen General Purpose service tier is more customizable, allowing the migration tools to tailor the recommendation more closely to the resource requirements of the source instance. You can thus unlock additional savings due to the recommended SKU being a better closer fit.
• PostgreSQL installation identification by Azure Arc-enabled servers:Announcing that Azure Arc-enabled servers now have the capability to automatically identify PostgreSQL installations. This new feature allows you to use Azure-based management for overseeing your servers running PostgreSQL at-scale.
• Get AI ready: What we’ve learned building AI competency at Microsoft:Like many organizations around the world, at Microsoft we’re constantly exploring ways to put AI to work—discovering how it can benefit our customers and partners, our workforce, and our business. Learn about the benefits of providing your teams with critical AI skill-building opportunities.