Can't find what is preventing auto-pause from working

Question

Can't find what is preventing auto-pause from working

P Christel 0

I have a General Purpose - Serverless database set-up. Auto-pause was initially working, but as of sometime yesterday, it will not pause. I initially found that I had SSMS open and suspected that was the issue. However, it has been closed for hours now and the database remains online with no activity. I have confirmed there are no active connections or queries. There are no replicatas or syncs. I didn't find any locks. I'm also not able to manually pause the database.

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Answer 1

hossein jalilian 13,280 Volunteer Moderator

Thanks for posting your question in the Microsoft Q&A forum.Azure SQL Serverless may refuse to auto-pause or manual pause if any session or required feature is keeping the database active, or if Azure is performing maintenance that temporarily blocks pausing. Even if the portal shows no active connections hidden or background sessions, or enabled features like geo replication or Data Sync, can prevent pausing.

Check for active sessions using the recommended query, ensure no blocking features are enabled, disconnect all clients, and optionally toggle compute settings or disable/re enable auto pause.

Please don't forget to close up the thread here by upvoting and accept it as an answer if it is helpful

P Christel 0 Reputation points

2025-12-12T17:44:54.7466667+00:00

I ran a number of recommended queries to try and find active connections, locks, etc. Nothing was identified. All clients are disconnected. I tried disabling/re enabling auto-pause and changing the delay. As indicated, no replication or synch is enabled. We are not within a maintenance window.

Until I figure this out, is there a means of manually pausing the database or bringing it offline as in on-premises SQL Server?
Erland Sommarskog 128.9K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2025-12-12T19:20:28.19+00:00
You can use Query Store to track if there has been any activity. If the server has been truly idle all day today, this query should not return any rows:

SELECT rsi.start_time, rsi.end_time, SUM(rs.count_executions) FROM sys.query_store_runtime_stats_interval rsi LEFT JOIN sys.query_store_runtime_stats rs ON rsi.runtime_stats_interval_id = rs.runtime_stats_interval_id WHERE rsi.start_time > '20251212' GROUP BY rsi.start_time, rsi.end_time ORDER BY rsi.start_time, rsi.end_time

Although, unique ad-hoc queries may not leave a trace here with the default capture mode.

If you see numbers here, you can dig further to see what queries that are being executed. You will not be able to determine from where they origin, though, with help of the data in Query Store.

Answer 2

P Christel 0

Thanks for everyone's help I was able to determine that SSMS was not properly disconnecting from the database even though it was no longer showing in the object explorer panel. I had to manually kill the session, which I don't understand. I'm also not sure why I wasn't able to identify this earlier. On a side-note, is there no way to bring an Azure DB offline like in on-premises?

Erland Sommarskog 128.9K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator

2025-12-12T20:17:56.0233333+00:00

Then SSMS must have been in a state where it kept polling the database. My experience is that just leaving a query window open will not prevent Serverless from pausing.

No, I don't think there is a way to set a database offline - given what Azure SQL Database is intended to be, it does not really make sense.

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Can't find what is preventing auto-pause from working

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