Time marches on, and along with it, so does system support in the IT universe. With this in mind, it’s important to take note of the fact that extended support for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is being phased out and will no longer be available. The end of support takes effect April 12, 2016.
While mid-April is right around the corner, it’s never too early for IT managers to start planning for the end of support and begin upgrading in order to forestall the threat of any security leaks, while ensuring that regulatory compliance is fully maintained. When Microsoft SQL support expires, security updates will no longer be available. As such, planning for the end of support should be top-of-mind among IT professionals using SQL Server 2005 — particularly those running databases on Windows Server 2003.
Beyond the obvious added benefit of ongoing security, migrating your SQL Server 2005 before extended support expires provides numerous critical advantages. These include:
- Maintaining Compliance: The upcoming PCI DSS 3.0 will make proving
compliance that much more difficult. As such, installing the latest version of
SQL Server will allow you to adhere to regulatory stipulations, as well as
internal security audits.
- Significantly Enhancing Performance: Industry benchmarks agree that SQL
Server 2014 provides performance gains of 13 times beyond SQL 2005, and
5.5 times over SQL 2008. And with SQL 2014 you can speed up mission-
critical applications with up to 30 times transaction performance gains, thanks
to Microsoft’s new in-memory OLTP engine. Queries can be speeded up 100
times with in-memory columnstore.
- Windows Server 2012 R2 lets you virtualize and consolidate, scale up on-site
or scale out on the private cloud, with ease. And upgrading can actually bring
costs down; you can keep more database workloads on fewer servers. Relying
on the same virtualization platform on-premises and in the cloud also keeps
your data management more nimble.
- Microsoft Azure enhances data availability while keeping ownership costs
low. Pre-configured templates make it simple to upgrade applications and
reap optimal availability on the cloud as well.
- Accessing the cloud for Web applications is greatly improved with the
Microsoft Azure SQL Database. Now it’s easier to migrate data from SQL
Server 2005 to Azure SQL Database. It also features near-zero maintenance,
with increased scalability.
- Upgrading and migrating your databases is amazingly cost-effective:
According to a Forrester Research, Inc. Microsoft SQL Server study, migrating
to SQL Server 2012 or 2014 yielded a payback period of only 9.5 months.
All things considered, upgrading before the April 12 end-of-support deadline makes perfect sense.
Download the data sheet: Upgrading from SDQL Server 2005
If you have any questions or need assistance, contact your ABC Services representative today.