It’s that time again – time to prepare for the passing of workhorse products that served our enterprises well, but are now over a decade old and need to be retired before they become security risks to your organization.
SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 will hit the “End of Support” milestone on July 9 of this year. Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 will hit that milestone on January 14, 2020. After those dates, you will no longer have access to patches or security updates, unless you do one of two things:
- You can pay Microsoft a lot of money for “Extended Security Updates,” provided that you have active Software Assurance on your licenses, or are purchasing them on a volume license subscription agreement. By “a lot of money,” we mean 75% of the full license cost annually, for a maximum of three years. After three years, you’re on your own. (Of course, if you have active Software Assurance on your licenses, you’re entitled to upgrade to a later version of the product as a benefit of your Software Assurance – so why haven’t you already done it?)
- You can migrate your Windows Server or SQL Server 2008 workloads into Microsoft Azure, in which case Microsoft will include Extended Security Updates for up to three years for no additional cost above what you’re paying for the Azure VMs.
Your other option is to upgrade to a more recent version of the products. But don’t wait until the last minute. If it turns out that you have applications that aren’t happy running on a later version of Windows or SQL, it would be preferable to find that out while you still have time to do something about it before support ends.
More info on the impending end of support can be found in this Microsoft FAQ.
And if you need help with that upgrade or migration process, or just need pricing on new licenses, give us a call. Microsoft server infrastructure is one of our specialties.
