ere are still almost 100,000 active installations of SQL Server 2008—despite Microsoft’s best efforts to encourage migration to newer versions. Regardless of the extensive options and incentives to move to Azure or newer versions of SQL Server, there are still those that haven’t upgraded.
The 2008 version of SQL Server is one of the most popular versions of SQL Server ever. This is largely due to it being the first widely adopted, long-running and stable version. As well, there were no major releases between 2008 and 2012, giving SQL Server 2008 a long run of new customers. New releases came quickly thereafter: SQL Server 2012, 2014, 2016, 2019, and 2022. (2025 is coming soon—stay tuned!) This spread the customer base across different versions and allowed customers to take advantage of interesting technologies for their business needs and greater innovation.
If you’re still running on SQL Server 2008, you’re not in an enviable position. Being forced off of a product is not the way to comfortably migrate to a new version. It’s often the least convenient and least cost-effective way to migrate, too. Migrating to newer versions could open up issues with bugs, incompatibility with current applications, and deprecated functions that must be updated during migration.
When is It Time to Upgrade?
Microsoft no longer supports SQL Server 2008 as of 2019. SQL Server 2012 is also no longer supported, so anyone with this version should also migrate to a newer version. Extended support for SQL Server 2016 ends in 2016, but standard support is also deprecated. To stay current, businesses should consider upgrading to SQL Server 2022.
You might think that having an older version of a critical infrastructure component has no downsides, but sticking to legacy software has its issues. The first and biggest issue is that the developer –in this case Microsoft– no longer releases updates or hotpatches for security vulnerabilities. Even if a security vulnerability is known, you might not receive a hotpatch for it. The second most common issue is a lack of compatibility with newer software, especially the Windows operating system. As your business develops more software and upgrades servers, you might find critical bugs due to compatibility issues with older SQL Server products.
Finally, SQL Server 2022 and future versions have useful tools for developers and system administrators.For example, if you have a hybrid environment with Azure cloud infrastructure, newer versions of SQL Server integrate more easily with your cloud provider. Replication is also much more streamlined and near-instant compared to older SQL Server versions.
The Best Way to Upgrade Your SQL Server
The best way to go about your SQL Server upgrade is to coordinate the timing of it to include the full stack, from hardware to application. This method, often referred to as the net new or side-by-side method, is typically the easiest way to upgrade. It resolves many of the compatibility and upgrade issues that occur when upgrading to the most recent versions of hardware and software. If this is not possible (which may be for a variety of reasons), there are a host of considerations that need to be taken into account.
The intersection points to consider, which are often key to the alignment of an upgrade, are the supported operating systems and SQL Server versions. From there, you can consider how the compatibility version affects your applications. There have been some major changes to both of these areas in the last few years which I will cover in my follow-up blog: What operating systems and SQL Server versions are compatible for upgrade?
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