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Microsoft’s class of 2008 has started dying out.
The company on Tuesday officially ended support for SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2.
As usual, the company is offering extended support, provided you have active Software Assurance (or equivalent subscriptions) for CALs and External Connector Licences permitting access to Servers with active Extended Security Updates coverage. As is increasingly the case, Microsoft is also offering free security for three years if you move SQL 2008 to Azure.
Microsoft has also issued a reminder that Windows Server 2008 is at death’s door, with support ending on January 14th, 2020 and the same future support options as are on offer for SQL Server.
The reminder also contains one of the few encouragements to adopt Windows Server 2019 CRN has been able to find.
Since the OS emerged in October 2018 Microsoft has been curiously quiet about it, instead concentrating on encouraging customers and partners alike into Azure despite the new product offering many software-defined-storage-and-networking features that make it a fine foundation for hybrid clouds. Repeated requests from CRN to Microsoft Australia about Server-2019-related activity for local partners have been met with a “watch this space” response.
Partners we’ve spoken to don’t mind that softly-softly approach, because most realises that the first year of a Windows Server release is too early in the buying cycle to bother their customers.
But Microsoft’s quietly given the channel a very good reason to adopt Windows Server 2019: to handle migrations of Windows Server 2008 file servers.
Buried in that reminder is a throwaway line about “a new migration tool to help you upgrade old file servers” and in the explanation of that tool is the throwaway line that it works just fine for Server-2008-to-Server-2012 or Server-2008-to-Server-2016 upgrades, but that those will be “around 50% slower” than a Server-2008-to-Server-2019 upgrade.
Microsoft also today offered another route for such migrations, by announcing that its Data Box Heavy, a one-petabyte on-prem-to-Azure data migration appliance, has become generally available. For now the big boxen are only offered in the United States and European Union, but the smaller options in the Data Box range have usually made it down under in short order.
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