Fabric Mirroring from SQL Server 2025 Azure VM

At the moment, you’re not missing anything obvious — SQL Server 2025 running on an Azure VM simply can’t be mirrored into Microsoft Fabric today. The reason is that SQL Server 2025 uses a new Change Feed‑based mirroring model, and Fabric currently expects a tighter level of platform control than a vanilla IaaS VM can offer. In practice, Microsoft has only wired this up for managed or Azure Arc‑enabled SQL Server setups, so a straight Azure VM falls outside that boundary for now.

This looks to be a product gap rather than a deliberate omission. Microsoft has been pretty consistent in saying that Fabric Mirroring is the future direction (and the successor to Synapse Link), and that it should eventually work wherever SQL Server runs. That said, there’s no public roadmap or timeline for when SQL Server 2025 on Azure VMs will be supported, which usually means it’s on the list but not around the corner.

As for workarounds, it depends what you’re trying to optimise for. If you absolutely need mirroring today and are set on SQL Server 2025, Arc‑enabling the instance is currently the only supported route. Otherwise, sticking with SQL Server 2019–2022, where CDC‑based mirroring from Azure VMs works fine, is the safer bet — or you can make do with Fabric pipelines or incremental copy patterns as a stop‑gap until native support lands. Not ideal, but it’ll get the job done for now.

The source of this information has come from Microsoft CoPilot.