This July marked the end of life for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and 2008R2. Let’s raise a glass to toast / pour some liquor out / reminisce about the past…
A couple of years ago I wrote about SQL 2005 reaching sunset EOL. It is largely the same fire drill no matter the version. On July 9, 2019 both SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 reached the end of their support.
I probably have used SQL Server 2008R2 the most of any version. For me it has a special place. I know it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that 2016/2017 have but…nostalgia.
What Does EOL Mean?
When software reaches the end of the SDLC, it is no longer supported.
Essentially what this means is there will be no more hotfixes and security updates from Microsoft. Therefore, staying put means possible compliance issues with auditors taking issue with unsupported production systems having potential security issues.
What Were the Big Features?
In SQL Server 2008, there were several big features (only highlighting some):
- TDE
- CDC
- Extended Events
- Resource Governor
- Table compression
- Backup compression
- Policy based management
- New Date/Time data types
- Better encryption key management
There wasn’t much added to SQL Server 2008 R2. It was more of an incremental update to 2008 than a whole new version. The biggest here are probably:
- New Report Builder
- Ability to slipstream
- Database mirroring enhancements
- Master Data Services.
SQL Server 2012 Begins the Modern SQL Server Builds
In the next version after 2008, SQL Server 2012 starts to change more rapidly. Some of the big changes here include:
- New high availability features marketed as AlwaysOn
- Availability Groups
- Failover Clustered Instances
- Enhancement to the engine
- Newly supported ANSI SQL / T-SQL keywords
- Columnstore indexes
What Happens Next?
There’s a bunch of options but the most popular are to either upgrade to the latest GA (which is SQL Server 2017 as of this writing) or move to Azure.
It doesn’t make much sense moving up to any version short of 2016. SQL Server 2016 represents a major change while the others in between 2005 and 2016 are more minor releases. Since SQL Server 2019 is still RC, get on either SQL Server 2016 or 2017. They are great versions with large significant enhancements.
Farewell Katmai and Kilimanjaro.
Thanks for reading!
If you liked this post then you might also like my recent post about Migration – How To Move SQL Server Database Files to a New Location
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