Azure Cosmos DB Blog
The latest news, updates and technical insights from the Azure Cosmos DB team
Latest posts
Announcing Private Preview: Read and Read/Write Privileges with Secondary Users for vCore-Based Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB
Editor's note (November 2025): Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB (vCore) has been renamed to Azure DocumentDB. This article was originally published before the rename, so it uses the product name that was current at the time. While the product name has changed, the technical concepts discussed in this article remain applicable unless otherwise noted. For the latest Azure DocumentDB announcements, features, and technical guidance, visit the Azure DocumentDB Dev Blog. We are excited to announce the private preview of a new feature in vCore-based Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB —Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) Integratio...
Announcing the GA of Dynamic Scaling (Per Region and Per Partition Autoscale)
We are excited to announce the GA of Azure Cosmos DB dynamic scaling – among multiple new features (Binary Encoding, Reserved Capacity) released recently to make your Azure Cosmos DB workloads even more cost efficient. Dynamic scaling is an enhancement to autoscale which provides cost optimization for nonuniform workloads. In the earlier version of autoscale, all partitions scaled uniformly based on the most active partition, which caused unnecessary scale-ups if only one or a few partitions were active. With this new feature, partitions and regions now scale independently, improving cost efficiency for non-unif...
Announcing Cost and Performance Improvements with Azure Cosmos DB’s Binary Encoding
We are excited to announce a significant enhancement to Azure Cosmos DB, bringing substantial cost savings and performance improvements to our users. The new binary encoding feature is now available for new containers and will soon be available for existing ones. What is Binary Encoding? Binary encoding converts JSON or other text-based data formats into a compact binary representation. Instead of storing data as human-readable text, it stores it as a sequence of bytes, which takes up less space and can be processed more quickly by computers. Key Benefits When will it be available Binary-encoding...
DiskANN for Azure Cosmos DB Now in Open Public Preview!
We’re excited to announce that the DiskANN vector index is now in open public preview in Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL! This means that anyone who enrolls an Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL resource in the Vector Search Public Preview now automatically gets access to the most powerful and scalable vector index on the planet. What is DiskANN? DiskANN is a powerful set of algorithms developed at Microsoft Research for low-latency, cost-effective, and highly accurate vector search at scale. It's an ideal solution for applications requiring fast and efficient search capabilities without compromising on ...
Enabling IP Access Control Policy for Azure Portal: A Necessity
Managing IP access control policies is essential for maintaining a secure Azure environment. These policies allow you to restrict access to your resources based on specific IP addresses, adding an extra layer of security to prevent unauthorized access. To avoid disruptions when accessing your Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB or Apache Cassandra API accounts through the Azure Portal, be sure to enable requests from the portal. This step ensures that features like Data Explorer remain accessible. Follow the instructions in this blog post to configure your IP access control policies correctly. New Portal IP Addresses...
Introducing the Data API Preview in vCore-based Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB
We're excited to announce the preview of the Data API for vCore-based Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB. The Data API provides a flexible and powerful way to interact with your database through HTTP-based API calls. What is the Data API The Data API for vCore-based Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB allows you work with your MongoDB data through simple HTTP requests, eliminating the need for traditional drivers or complex queries. It offers an easy way to perform basic operations like creating, reading, updating, and deleting data directly from your applications. This simplifies connecting your MongoDB data to web app...
Azure Cosmos DB Vector Search with DiskANN Part 1: Full Space Search
Vector Search with Azure Cosmos DB Azure Cosmos DB NoSQL features advanced vector indexing and search capabilities powered by DiskANN, a suite of highly scalable, accurate, and cost-effective approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) algorithms for low-latency vector search at any scale. Azure Cosmos DB features key capabilities important for building Modern AI applications: In this multi-part series, we dive into several aspects of vector indexing, vector similarity search performance, and highlight best practices with Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL. To kick things off in Part 1, we: ...
How to migrate MongoDB to Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB using Spark and Databricks
MongoDB is a popular document database that offers high performance, scalability, and flexibility. Many organizations use MongoDB to store and process large volumes of data for various applications. However, managing and maintaining MongoDB clusters can be challenging and costly, especially as the data grows and the demand increases. Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB, particularly the vCore-based model, offers several advantages over traditional MongoDB. It provides a fully managed, globally distributed database service with a 99.99% high availability SLA, ensuring robust performance and reliability. The vCore-...
What’s New in Azure Cosmos DB Data Explorer: A Better Way to Navigate Your Data
As a developer, you may have to work on various projects that involve storing and querying data from different regions and devices. Whether you are building a web application, a mobile app, a gaming platform, or an IoT solution, you want a database that can handle the complexity and scale of your data without compromising on performance and availability. You also want to have a convenient and intuitive way to explore and manage your data and resources from a single interface. That's where Azure Cosmos DB and its Data Explorer come in handy. Azure Cosmos DB is a fully managed NoSQL database service that off...