GitHub is preparing for one of the most significant infrastructure transformations in its history — a full migration to Microsoft’s Azure cloud servers over the next two years, according to The Verge.
The move marks a pivotal moment for the world’s largest developer platform as it grapples with mounting data center limitations and surging demand driven by AI-powered services like Copilot.
The migration signals not only a deepening of GitHub’s technical dependence on its parent company, Microsoft, but also a major operational shift within the developer ecosystem. The transition follows a string of capacity issues at GitHub’s primary data centers in Virginia, where space and scalability have become major bottlenecks.
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GitHub Chief Technology Officer Vladimir Fedorov laid out the urgency of the shift in an internal announcement, describing the current data constraints as unsustainable.
“We are constrained on data server capacity with limited opportunities to bring more capacity online in the North Virginia region,” Fedorov said.
He emphasized that moving to Azure is “existential for GitHub to have the ability to scale to meet the demands of AI and Copilot.”
Microsoft’s senior leadership, including its CoreAI division, is backing the transition, showing how GitHub’s evolution has become inseparable from Microsoft’s broader artificial intelligence and cloud strategy.
“CoreAI and Azure are mobilizing to get us the capacity and anything else we need to unlock us,” Fedorov noted, suggesting a joint operational framework between the developer platform and Microsoft’s internal infrastructure teams.
The integration builds on a steady consolidation process that began after Microsoft’s $7.5 billion acquisition of GitHub in 2018. The company was later moved under Microsoft’s Developer Division in 2021, bringing it closer to teams working on products like Visual Studio and Azure AI.
Past Setbacks and a New Approach
GitHub’s path to Azure has not been straightforward. Earlier migration efforts, including initiatives like Git in Azure and Azure Sites Automation, encountered delays and technical challenges. Fedorov admitted as much, writing, “I know this is not the first time we said GitHub is moving to Azure. I also know that these types of migrations can drag on, and the longer they drag on, the more likely they are to fail.”
Determined to avoid another drawn-out transition, GitHub’s leadership has reprioritized company-wide efforts, asking teams to delay feature releases and concentrate engineering resources on infrastructure. The internal target is to complete the bulk of migration work within 12 months, with a full switchover to Azure in 24 months.
Scaling for the AI Era
GitHub’s Chief Operating Officer, Kyle Daigle, confirmed the plan in an official statement, highlighting how the surge in developer activity and AI-driven workflows is pushing the company’s existing systems to their limits.
“We need to scale faster to meet the explosive growth in developer activity and AI-powered workflows, and our current infrastructure is hitting its limits,” Daigle said.
By moving to Azure, GitHub expects to gain access to more flexible computing resources, deeper integration with Microsoft’s AI capabilities, and greater global redundancy. The migration will also allow the company to better support Copilot, its AI coding assistant developed with OpenAI, which now powers millions of daily code suggestions and consumes massive amounts of compute capacity.
However, migrating GitHub’s sprawling infrastructure — including complex systems like MySQL clusters, GitHub Actions, and search services — could cause temporary disruptions. The platform has faced several outages in the past year, affecting its automation tools and enterprise import features, underscoring how fragile its backend can be during periods of change.
Analysts note that while moving to Azure may resolve capacity issues, it will also tighten Microsoft’s control over GitHub’s operations. The platform now reports directly into Microsoft’s CoreAI and developer leadership, with no standalone CEO following the recent departure of Thomas Dohmke. This consolidation has already led to organizational changes, such as the replacement of Slack with Microsoft Teams for internal communication.
Internally, employees describe the shift as a cultural and technical convergence with Microsoft. GitHub teams are increasingly using Microsoft’s toolchain, security standards, and deployment systems — part of what executives describe as an effort to “speak the same operational language.”
For Microsoft, GitHub’s migration represents more than just an infrastructure upgrade. The tech giant appears to see it as a symbolic moment in the company’s effort to integrate its developer assets under a unified cloud and AI vision.
However, the migration has presented the challenge of ensuring that this ambitious migration delivers what it promises to the global developer community that relies on GitHub daily: greater scale, stability, and performance — without compromising the reliability and openness that made GitHub the backbone of modern software development.