Lifecycle & Upgrades
SQL Server upgrades and migrations are rarely isolated technical tasks. This section examines lifecycle decisions, application dependencies, testing, downtime constraints, migration paths, and the operational trade-offs involved in changing production environments safely.
SQL Server 2025: Why “What’s New?” Is the Wrong First Question
In many SQL Server 2025 upgrade discussions, the conversation starts in a familiar way. A new version appears, someone opens the feature list, and before the team has properly understood the current estate, the discussion already moves toward individual capabilities that sound useful, modern, or strategically relevant. That reaction is ...
SQL Server 2016 End of Support: Upgrade, Migration, Azure or ESU is the wrong first question
In many SQL Server environments, the SQL Server 2016 end-of-support discussion starts at the wrong level. The first conversation is often already about upgrade, migration, Azure, or Extended Security Updates, although there is no reliable inventory of the instance, the applications around it, SQL Agent jobs, reporting dependencies, vendor boundaries, ...