As the saying goes, time flies when you are having fun. We are already on the 2nd half of June in 2019 and if you were not aware, extended support for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 SP4 and 2008 R2 SP3 ends on July, 9th, 2019. Previous service packs for each product have already since expired and hopefully you are on the latest service pack anyway. Keep in mind that this also includes regular security updates. For those that might be counting, that is 19 days away (including the due date). 19 days and do you know where your 2008 & 2008 R2 servers are at? If so, do you have a plan?
D-Day
The documentation from Microsoft is fairly clear on the dates. If you have not read the documentation, I recommend you take a look, to get an idea of when your products sunset. Shown below, you can see that July 9th, 2019 is indeed the final day that Microsoft will provide support for the highlighted .
What does that really mean though?
It means that if you are still running those product versions, and you very well could be (I still have clients with SQL 2005 running in Production), that any support you wish to garner from Microsoft will have a financial impact. In other words, if you need help, you’ll have to crack open the bank account and fork over some cash to Microsoft. I don’t know how much that will be, however Microsoft is pushing pretty hard to get people to address these older versions of the product.
Mitigation
Hopefully you are already well aware of this looming deadline and have already put an action plan into motion ensuring that your production environment continues to be supported. As previously mentioned, there are several things that you can do to ensure support.
Azure – If you migrated your on-premises 2008/2008 R2 workloads into an Azure VM (Infrastructure as a Service), you will continue to get extended support for the product at no extra charge for another 3 years. Keep in mind, that this extension is intended for you to eventually migrate away from 2008/2008R2 onto new versions of the product. However, this would give you a little breathing room as you formulate and implement an action plan.
Upgrade – If moving to Azure is not a viable option, you can migrate to a newer version of SQL Server. Not only will you continue to get support with new versions, but there are some vast improvements in the product so you might also get a performance boost along with it.
Purchase Support – If the previous two options don’t work, as a last resort, you can purchase an extended support plan for SQL Server 2008 & 2008 R2. While I do not know what kind of price point this will be, I suspect that it might not be cheap. As I mentioned, Microsoft is pushing fairly hard to get organizations to move to newer versions. If you are interested in this, contact your local Microsoft licensing partner for further details.
Summary
The deadline is quickly approaching, and those 19 days will be gone in a blink. Thankfully, Microsoft has provided several ways that you can mitigate losing extended support for SQL Server 2008 & 2008 R2. Do your due diligence and look at your environment and formula an action plan that you can put into place.
Afterall, the servers you save just might be your own
© 2019, John Morehouse. All rights reserved.
