SQL 2014 End of Support, protect your most important data!

Azure

Here we are again. It seems like just a few months ago we were all racing to figure out what to do with our production Server 2012 machines... because it just went end of support October 10th, 2023. More on that topic here! Now, SQL 2014 reaches end of support July 9th 2024.

So What?

Your SQL data might be the most important data you are housing on your company's infrastructure. Since it's the most important to your company, it needs to be protected at the highest level. With end of support, we are no longer getting critical updates which leaves major gaps in the security posture for your production workloads. Being on this old version also means there are better versions out there! New features and technologies have certainly come out since 2014 over the last decade. Another thing to note is that you may run into issues with any security compliance standards you must adhere to, or issues with cyber security insurance coverage. That is not a conversation you want to have with your boss.

What are my options?

1) Extended Security Updates (ESU) The easy button here is getting ESU. However, this only pushes the problem and should only be used as a stop gap. Microsoft offers ESU, for a hefty price of course, to allow time to plan one of the other options. You are going to have to make a change soon regardless, but this offers you some additional time to figure out what is right for your organizations' data long term.

2)Migrating to a Newer SQL Server The current SQL Server version out is SQL Server 2022. Upgrading your version offers a few things. First, the reason for this article, getting off an unsupported version of SQL. Second, you get new features your team will probably enjoy and have an opportunity to enhance what they offer to the business. This may be an option if you have already invested in infrastructure, space, and staff to host. Make sure to check the compatibility matrix, depending on your version, you may have to do some step-up upgrades first! SQL Server 2022 (16.x) supports upgrade from the following versions of SQL Server:

  • SQL Server 2012 (11.x) SP4 or later
  • SQL Server 2014 (12.x) SP3 or later
  • SQL Server 2016 (13.x) SP3 or later
  • SQL Server 2017 (14.x)
  • SQL Server 2019 (15.x)

3) Migrate to Azure Moving to the cloud, or at least having some sort of cloud posture, may be how your business wants to operate. Having to upgrade something is a perfect time to make the switch if that is right for you. With Azure there are all sorts of options that provide fast scalable solutions. Just keep in mind that you generally want to keep your data next to your applications, so if you are moving this from on-premises, think about what is connecting to it.

  1. SQL Server hosted on an Azure Virtual Machine -- Not a great option, but an option nonetheless. This is simply having a virtual machine in Azure, with SQL installed not leveraging any PaaS offerings. You will still need to maintain the server OS as you did in the previous instance, and the SQL software upgrades with this option. Time to offload upgrades if you can. Every admin hates scheduling upgrades during off-hours.
  2. Azure SQL Database -- This is a fast and flexible PaaS solution offering from Azure. It is fully managed, so you don't have to wrap this into your server maintenance and provides near-limitless storage capacity and responsive serverless compute. Migrations to this solution involve a bit more work than the next option!
  3. Azure SQL Managed Instances -- This Azure offering is also a PaaS solution which provides the ability for a lift and shift. It does not provide as much storage as Azure SQL Database, but this is the most common migration strategy we see when migrating from on-premises to Azure.

What's Next?

At this point in time, you should be considering your options and coming up with an action plan. The clock is ticking and while there are still a few months until the end of support date, these things always creep up faster than we like. There are several options, or combination of options depending on what is right for your business. Get ahead of this issue and ensure your data is secured. Best of luck to all my Sys Admin brethren out there!