Cosmos not able to enable Synapse Link

The previous account that was deleted did have synapse link enabled.

The new one I am creating has the same name.
It was a core NoSQL cosmos DB.

It is being provisioned using Bicep.

I also tried on our development environment to create a new cosmos account and then enable Synapse Link in the portal this has failed with the same error.

Hi Craig Webb,
Thank you for confirming the additional details this clarifies the situation further.

What you’re seeing is expected with the recent changes to Azure Synapse Link for Cosmos DB. Even though your previous account had Synapse Link enabled, once that account was deleted, that capability is permanently lost with it. When you create a new account — even with the same name, API (Core/NoSQL), and using Bicep — it is treated as an entirely new resource, and Synapse Link can no longer be enabled on it. [learn.microsoft.com]

The fact that you’re observing the same behavior when creating a fresh account in your development environment through the portal also confirms that this is not related to the provisioning method (Bicep vs portal), but rather a platform-level change.

In the current state, Synapse Link is restricted for new enablement scenarios, including newly created or recreated Cosmos DB accounts, while existing accounts that already had it enabled continue to function without impact. [learn.microsoft.com]

Given this, for any new or re-created environments, the recommended approach would be to evaluate the newer option of Cosmos DB Mirroring in Microsoft Fabric for similar analytical capabilities going forward.

I understand this can be impactful for your setup, especially when rebuilding environments. If this is a blocking scenario, please let me know and I can help check internally for any possible alternatives or guidance specific to your case.

I see. It hasn't been very well communicated that it was going to be turned off and that a new account could not be created using it. As the documentation just says it should not be used for new projects.

This is a business-critical problem for us as our production environment has no solution to get back operating and has been this way for over a week now.

Microsoft Fabric has a much higher entry cost than what we had with Cosmos DB + Synapse Link and Synapse Serverless. It will also take development time for us to change to an alternative solution that means our production environment will be down for much longer.

Our previous experience when a feature was being deprecated like this has been clear emails with advanced warning.

With this deprecation all I have seen is an update to a webpage that I only looked at after we encountered this issue as we had already been using synapse link for over a year.

Hi
Thank you for sharing the additional context, and I completely understand your concern here especially given this is impacting your production environment and existing architecture rather than a brand-new adoption scenario.

From what you’ve described, your team had an established Cosmos DB + Synapse Link + Synapse Serverless setup that had been operating successfully for a significant period of time, and the current issue only surfaced after recreating the account. I understand your concern regarding the limited visibility around this behavioral change and the operational impact it has caused.

You are also correct that the current documentation wording mainly references recommendations for “new projects,” which may not clearly communicate the impact on disaster recovery, redeployment, or environment rebuild scenarios involving newly recreated accounts.

At this stage, since this is a business-critical production blocker with no immediate recovery path using the previous architecture, the best next step would be to engage the product team internally for clarification on:

• Whether there is any supported exception or temporary path to re-enable Synapse Link on recreated accounts.

• Whether any mitigation or transitional guidance exists for customers in scenarios like yours.

• Whether additional communication or official guidance is planned regarding this change and its impact on existing customers performing account recreation.

I will recommend treating this as a production-impacting/blocking scenario due to the loss of an existing operational capability after account recreation.

Thank you again for providing the detailed feedback it is valuable and helps highlight the real-world impact of this change.