This was my 5th SQL Server version upgrade.
I have worked with every version of SQL Server since it was first available from Microsoft on OS/2. Each version has improved the features, the stability, and the scalability, and I’ve looked forward to each change. In many of the companies I worked at, we had a fairly homogenous environment, with one or two versions to support. I think some of that was the timing of my employment dates with the version release dates. If I’d stayed longer at a few jobs, I think I might have ended up supporting three versions of SQL Server in a few places.
That seems to have changed, however with the long delay of SQL Server 2005, and then the very short delays for SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2. Now it seems many companies have two or three versions at a minimum and might have 4 versions, with SQL Server 2000 servers still available. The last year on Twitter I’ve seen a number of DBAs noting that they are retiring SQL Server 2000 instances at a good clip, with a few people eliminating the version from their environments, but there are plenty of instances still out there.
This week I wanted to see what percentage of people are still supporting older versions. There seems to be less of a push to upgrade old servers, but we still install the latest version for newer servers. Supporting more versions may mean a higher cost of support for your infrastructure, so I decided to ask this question:
What’s the oldest version of SQL Server you still support?
It would be good to know how many versions you are supporting, and if you have older versions (v6.5, v7, v2000), are they used in limited systems, such as keycard systems only. My intention is to try and get an understanding of the shape of the SQL Server community, and the types of work they do each day.
As SQL Server evolves from a core database engine and includes a wide variety of subsystems and features, I think there is less of a need to upgrade existing instances en masse. Instead targeting those applications that receive large benefits from the changes seems to make more sense. With a very stable engine and very few security problems, I think that companies will use each version longer and require their DBAs to support more versions at any one time. I am sure by the middle of 2010, we will have some DBAs supporting five versions of SQL Server in their companies, going back to SQL Server 2000.
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Hi Steve,
It’s less than a year since I last upgraded a SQL7 server to SQL2000 – any further, and we wouldn’t have been able to get support on it. I’m currently looking after an environment that runs on SQL2000SP3a, SQL2000SP4, SQL2005SP3, with utility SQL2008 & SQL2008R2 servers.
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Wow, 7 to 2000 in 2010. I think the old ones work fine if they’ve run this long, but surprised you couldn’t go to 2005 at least.
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I have everything from SQL 2000 up to SQL 2008 R2 and plans to deploy SQL 2012 when it comes out. We’re doing our best to retire SQL 2000 instances, but we still have some old software that is not supported anymore and won’t upgrade. Many legacy systems have undocumented conenctions to some of our SQL 2000 systems which makes retiring them painfully slow…still working on a retirement that has been inprocess for over a year.
Oh, we also support both EE and Std, so does that make it 8 versions? 😉
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Right now I have two SQL 2000 SP3 servers left (one I just upgraded the test server for and the other is getting decomissioned). The one being decomissioned is for SMS and the other is for blood work of some sort and is running an end of life application with no replacement from that company. 12 2000 SP4 machines that I haven’t looked at upgrading yet. The bulk of our servers, 86, are SQL 2005 or SQL 2008 R2, 42. And a few on SQL 2008, 8. I haven’t talked to many people about upgrading to SQL 2012 yet but I’m sure before the end of next year we’ll have at least one and I don’t think it’s likely that I’ll be able to get rid of any of the other versions before then.
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