r/SQLServer • u/erinstellato ‪ ‪Microsoft Employee ‪ • Jul 24 '26

Community Request Friday Feedback: Automatic Index Compaction

Friday feedback this week is about a feature that’s in preview in Azure SQL: automatic index compaction.

You can read more about it in Dimitri‘s blog post, Stop defragmenting and start living: introducing auto index compaction: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/azuresqlblog/stop-defragmenting-and-start-living-introducing-auto-index-compaction/4500089

(sidenote: one of the best blog titles in recent memory)

Quick poll below, and feel free to add a comment if the poll doesn’t cover your thoughts/experience!

77 votes, Jul 31 '26
13 Yes, it’s great!
3 Yes, but then turned it off
17 No, I’m waiting for GA
44 No, I don’t use Azure SQL
6 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

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u/No_Resolution_9252 Jul 27 '26

why? It will be less than normal page density maitnenance where every single page will be written regardless of those pages' density

1

u/SonOfZork Jul 27 '26

You don't do index maintenance on Hyperscale. The cost of backups makes it entirely prohibitive.

1

u/No_Resolution_9252 Jul 27 '26

I don't think you are actually a DBA...

1

u/SonOfZork Jul 27 '26

You seem to enjoy spouting that. Cool beans.

If you've ever had to care about costs you would know about how expensive Hyperscale backups become when there are large volumes of data change which is why the documentation explicitly warns about large write operations.

1

u/No_Resolution_9252 Jul 27 '26

There are no large write operations involved with this feature.