SQL Server 2005 was arguably the first “proper” enterprise grade version of SQL Server and heraled the start of Microsoft giving Oracle a run for their money. Since it’s now over ten years old, there’s no surprise that extended support is coming to an end in April 2016 and yet we are still seeing a lot of SQL Server 2005 out there running key applications.
So, given your SQL 2005 environment has been running along happily for many years, do you really need to upgrade?…. Why not simply leave it to happily carry-on doing what it’s doing and avoid the expense and hassle of the upgrade?
Well first of all, think what the world was like in 2005 … apart from Liverpool winning the Champions League or the marriage of Prince Charles and Camilla. 2005 was a world where only a few months before VMware launched ESX 2.5, Hyper-V was still 3 years away and Cloud, well cloud was just a glint in a marketeers eye.
Coming back to 2015 (nearly 16!) …. you really should plan for that upgrade and here are some of the reasons you can tell your boss (unless they are a Liverpool fan, then they may still believe 2005 was only yesterday):
Hotfixes and Updates – After 12/04/16, these won’t be provided, yikes
Improved Uptime – A newer environment is going to help you sleep at night and gives better HA/DR options
Improved Security – Will a de-supported 2005 system pass an audit?
Ease of Support – Administrators can more easily manage newer versions
Improved Applications – Help to eliminate application reliability caused by database issues
Additional Features – For data warehouses and clever analytics, there’s a wealth of benefit in later versions of SQL Server
Frankly we’re happy to help our customers continue to support SQL Server 2005, however given there’s now an absolute end in sight to the extended end-of-life support for 2005, the reasons to upgrade are compelling.
If this scenario resonates with you, contact Onomi for advice around the best options to upgrade your SQL Server 2005 environments, our SQL Server experts will be able to give a clear plan based on the real-world pros and cons of the available options.
info@onomi.co.uk / (+44) 1159 338474