Microsoft has made DiskANN vector indexes and vector search generally available in Azure SQL Database, SQL database in Microsoft Fabric, and Azure SQL Managed Instance using the always-up-to-date policy. The September 29 announcement moves these capabilities beyond preview on those services.

Vector search finds conceptually similar text, documents, images or products using numeric embeddings. A DiskANN index can locate likely matches without comparing every vector, helping larger collections remain practical to search. Developers can combine similarity results with ordinary SQL filters, joins and security rules.

The release supports inserts, updates and deletes, with vector-index maintenance performed asynchronously. SQL can choose an exact or approximate search strategy according to the query and available indexes.

The distinction between products matters: Microsoft's documentation still identifies vector indexes and VECTOR_SEARCH as preview features in SQL Server 2025 and Managed Instance using the SQL Server 2025 update policy. This announcement does not make them generally available in those configurations.