Description
Backups confined to one region can limit recovery options during a regional outage. Geo-redundant backup supports disaster recovery but does not guarantee immediate failover or high availability. Azure Database for MariaDB retired on September 19, 2025.
Potential impact
- Regional outages may prevent recovery to the required point or prolong restoration.
- Depending on a retired service makes supported recovery and operations harder to maintain.
Remediation
Check application compatibility and migrate to a supported service such as MySQL Flexible Server. When regional disaster recovery is required, configure geo_redundant_backup_enabled = true at creation in a supported region and test retention and recovery procedures. Changing this option on MySQL Flexible Server in AzureRM 5.6.0 requires server replacement, so plan data migration and downtime.
Examples
The before example is historical configuration for the retired MariaDB service. The after excerpt shows backup settings for a compatible MySQL Flexible Server migration destination; configure authentication, capacity and private connectivity separately. Changing the resource type alone does not migrate data.
Before
resource "azurerm_mariadb_server" "example" {
name = "example-mariadb-server"
location = azurerm_resource_group.example.location
resource_group_name = azurerm_resource_group.example.name
backup_retention_days = 7
geo_redundant_backup_enabled = false
public_network_access_enabled = false
ssl_enforcement_enabled = true
}
After
resource "azurerm_mysql_flexible_server" "example" {
name = "example-mariadb-server"
location = azurerm_resource_group.example.location
resource_group_name = azurerm_resource_group.example.name
backup_retention_days = 7
geo_redundant_backup_enabled = true
public_network_access = "Disabled"
}
The after example requests geo-redundant backup and disables public network access. Verify regional support and use actual restore tests to assess acceptable data loss and recovery time.