GitHub to Fully Migrate Infrastructure to Microsoft Azure, Delays New Feature Development

GitHub, the developer platform owned by Microsoft, is set for a major overhaul as it prepares to move all of its infrastructure to Microsoft Azure within the next two years — even if it means pausing new product features.

According to an internal memo obtained by The New Stack, GitHub CTO Vladimir Fedorov told staff that the company’s Virginia data centre has reached capacity limits, making the migration critical to meet the growing demands of AI and GitHub Copilot.

“It’s existential for us to keep up with the demands of AI and Copilot, which are changing how people use GitHub,” Fedorov wrote. He emphasised that GitHub must complete the move within 18 months, leaving a six-month buffer to manage the parallel operation of both old and new systems.

To meet that deadline, GitHub teams have been instructed to delay feature work and focus solely on the migration. “We have a small opportunity window where we can delay feature work to focus, and we need to make that window as short as possible,” Fedorov noted.

While GitHub has gradually adopted Azure for some services — such as Actions, search, and its Europe-based Project Proxima — the upcoming shift marks its most extensive cloud migration yet.

The decision comes amid a series of recent outages and scaling issues in GitHub’s data centres. Some employees have expressed concern that moving complex systems like MySQL clusters to Azure could further disrupt stability. Still, Fedorov insists the move is unavoidable.

GitHub has not responded to The Left Shift's request for comment till the time of publication.