If you are still on versions earlier than SQL Server 2014, now is the time to consider upgrading to take advantage of the ground-breaking improvements in performance. Support for the following versions of SQL Server is ending soon, which means no more security updates, higher maintenance costs and potential compliance concerns:
- SQL Server 2005 extended support ends on April 12th 2016
- SQL Server 2008 mainstream support ended on July 8th 2014 and is in extended support until July 9th 2019
While these dates may seem distant, now is the time to develop a migration plan for your applications that currently rely on SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2014 or Microsoft Azure SQL Database. There is tremendous value available in upgrading to the latest version of SQL Server including:
- Performance gains. Benchmarks show SQL Server 2014 performs 13x faster compared to SQL Server 2005* and 5.5x faster compared to SQL Server 2008**.
- Additional speed using Microsoft in-memory technologies for OLTP, data warehousing and analytics.
- Simpler and easier patching and maintenance with greater online operations.
- Easier than ever before high availability.
We urge you to start your planning for migration. This transition will provide you the security features and reliability that you’ve experienced over the last decade with SQL Server 2005, with the added value of the features now included in SQL Server 2014, as well as the hybrid opportunities available to you with Microsoft Azure.
More information such as the SQL Server 2005 Upgrade Datasheet is available via Microsoft here.
*13x gain based on TPC-E benchmark results published for SQL Server 2014 (www.tpc.org/4069), SQL Server 2005 (www.tpc.org/4001) as of 10/8/14.
**5.5x gain based on TPC-E benchmark results published for SQL Server 2014 (www.tpc.org/4069), SQL Server 2008 (www.tpc.org/4023) as of 10/8/14.
