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How to Maintain the Highest SQL Server Operability, Performance, Security and Availability, at the Lowest Cost, In the Face of Extended Support – An interview with Connor Cox, Director of Business Development, DH2i

Microsoft Extended Support for SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 is ending in just under a year.  What options are available, if you’re still using either of these versions?

A:  Microsoft offers a number of phases of support for their SQL Server releases. Mainstream Support spans years 0-5 and solves functional and security problems. Extended Support covers years 6-10 and also addresses critical functional issues and security. After extended support ends, there are a couple other options. One offers security updates for an additional three years for free.  However, under terms of this agreement, the workloads must be moved to the Azure cloud.

Another option is that you can purchase extended security updates for 75% of the licensing costs annually for up to three years. This new paid Extended Security Update plan requires Software Assurance and can only be applied to currently supported versions of SQL Server (i.e., SQL Server 2008 and newer).

Of course, you could always just do nothing prior to the July 9, 2019 deadline, thereby placing your systems at security, legal and regulatory compliance risk.

I am guessing that most IT professionals don’t want to put their IT environment – and therefore their business – at security, legal, or regulatory compliance risk.  Many will likely pursue the upgrade path.  What should be kept in mind if this is your strategy?

CC: If you’re thinking of pursuing the upgrade path, there are a few very key considerations. The first question is that of which version to choose.  Your IT requirements will likely come first, namely — your organization’s high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (HA/DR) requirements. Whether you need to keep all data onsite, or a public cloud is a viable option, and the number of cores you need to buy or renew must be considered as well.  Of course, budget is almost always a key consideration too.  Scheduling downtime for testing – and the migration itself – also needs to be taken into account. Knowing these considerations can help you to set objectives for the upgrade. Two of the objectives will likely include minimizing the cost by upgrading the fewest cores as possible, and upgrading to the least expensive edition that fulfils your feature and performance requirements. Another objective might be to have the least disruptive upgrades as possible to minimize downtime.

Not to worry!  You don’t have to do this all by yourself!  There are tools that can enable you to streamline and ensure fast and accurate migrations from SQL Server 2008/R2.  Here again, you have choices to make.  In a perfect world, you will of course want a solution that includes built-in high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) capabilities.  And if controlling/lowering costs is also a primary objective, you will want to minimize the number of cores you need to upgrade. Therefore, you should seek a solution that also assists with consolidation.  Avoiding Microsoft Enterprise Edition will also help to minimize costs – so seek a solution that allows and enables 3+ node clusters on any edition.  This could likely save you 25-60% in cost and also ensures the highest levels of availability.

DH2i

Connor Cox
Connor Cox
DH2i Director of Business Development, Connor Cox, is a technical business development executive with extensive experience assisting customers transform their IT capabilities to maximize business value. As an enterprise IT strategist, Connor helps organizations achieve the highest overall IT service availability, improve agility, and minimize TCO. He has worked in the enterprise tech startup field for the past 5 years. Connor earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Colorado State University and was listed as a CRN Channel Chief for 2017 and 2018.

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