Upgrading SQL Server Central

Posted on December 14, 2022 by way0utwest

The decision to upgrade database servers can be a complicated one that involves features, costs, and support requirements. While I think many people would love to run database systems for ten years, often there are concerns about support, which effectively ends after five years for SQL Server. While you can purchase extended support, is that worth the cost? A hard question to answer, but one I’ve had to confront lately. When do you upgrade a database instance?

I’ve discussed this with a few customers, but it also came up in the context of SQL Server Central. We run a SQL Server 2016 database on Windows Server 2016. Someone recently sent a note that since 2016 is out of support, they’d like to upgrade the systems. They were thinking SQL Server 2019 on Windows Server 2022, but with the release of SQL Server 2022 that doesn’t make sense.

I want to defer this process as long as possible. To me that means always aiming for the latest and greatest version. SQL Server releases roughly every 2-3 years, so this is the best time to upgrade for us. If we can upgrade before 12 months, we get 4+ years before we revisit this topic. If we were to upgrade to SQL Server 2019, then we’re already down to 2 years of support before we need to consider the topic again.

I think many DBAs would feel the same way, looking to test and certify SQL Server 2022 for their internal apps. This is one reason why getting the RC0 and RC1 releases of new versions for some initial testing make sense. The sooner you can upgrade in version’s lifecycle, the longer before you do it again. Of course, if you have more than 50 servers, you might just be upgrading every year anyway, as some system is always falling out of support.

Upgrades take time. There’s the time considering the decision, the testing a new system, the actual upgrade time, whether in place or migration, all of which eat up labor and time. Doing this for more than a few servers can become a full time job in some cases. That makes me start to really see the wisdom of using a PaaS service that’s evergreen.

For organizations where support matters, then upgrades are a fact of life and a regular occurrence. However, if formal support isn’t an issue, you might feel differently. The more mainstream you keep your feature usage, the more likely that you can go far past 5, or even 10 years, with your database system. I know there are still companies running 2008, 2005, and even a few 2000 servers. I don’t know that the SQL Server Central code would run on SQL Server 2000, but it might. Project Nami is using fairly generic SQL. If we were more concerned about database licensing, likely we’d have not upgraded the site from ASP.NET to WordPress.

For now, I think we’ll likely upgrade sometime in early 2023. I am not worried if things are delayed, but I do know that we also want to upgrade both WordPress and PHP. There is an order to getting all these steps completed with OS and database upgrades. Because of this, I want to ensure that we proceed soon and get things moving while my schedule is fairly light so that I can test and deal with any issues that arise. Hopefully there won’t be any, but I’ve learned to hope for the best and prepare for the worst, especially with software upgrades.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

Posted in Editorial | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Daily Coping 14 Dec 2022

Posted on December 14, 2022 by way0utwest

Today’s coping tip is to offer to help someone who is facing difficulties now.

I’ve been very lucky in life. I find that success often has me associating with people who also have lots of success. Not always, but often.

Recently I had someone reach out to me, asking if I remembered another person from the past. I did and found out this person was getting laid off and was looking for a job. I told my friend to have them reach out to me, with permission to pass along my contact stuff.

I then offered to do some introductions with others, and see if there were potential opportunities. I sent a few messages, and I’m hoping one of them works out.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQL Server Central newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

Posted in Blog | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Daily Coping 14 Dec 2022

T-SQL Tuesday #157–The End of Year

Posted on December 13, 2022 by way0utwest

tsqltuesdayIt’s that time of the month, and I’m late. I’ve been on holiday for a week, so this is a quick post for T-SQL Tuesday. This month is hosted by Garry Bargsley, and is a fitting topic for the last month of the year.

Garry asks about end of the year data activities. Most of his examples are administrative, but I’m sure there might be some dev activities as well. I’ve got a few thoughts on each, some of which I’ve done, some of which I wish I’d have done in the past, but recommend now.

T-SQL Tuesday is a great place to participate in the community and a great way to show your knowledge and skills off as well for potential employees. Write your own posts on a blog, or somewhere like LinkedIn, Medium, or another site. If you want to host, ping me @way0utwest or sjones at sqlservercentral dot com.

End of Year Administration

When I’ve been in the Operations side of data, there aren’t a lot of things I do at the end of the year, but I do find the downtime useful for some maintenance and cleanup. Usually we are doing well reactive stuff as business slows down, so I spend time on things that I’ve wanted to do all year, but haven’t had time to tackle.

The things I try to do:

  • Index cleanup – look for dups, unused, etc.
  • archive/delete data or tables – I try to clean data where possible. Less always makes things faster
  • Chronic issues – Think about how I can solve something and prevent future problems
  • Space planning – look over trends and be sure we’re ready for next year.
  • Security – remove old accounts (or disable) as much as possible.

End of Year Development

Development tasks tend to be more tightly specified, and there often isn’t a good end of year list. However, similar to administration, one thing I have tried to do when times are slow is tackle things I’d want to change, but never have time. End of year is like this, as are some times after deployments.

Apart from code I might want to refactor or change, the big things I might look at during the end of year are:

  • Branch cleanup – easy to have some of these hanging around.
  • Pipelines – Use time to improve these, or ensure that they are noisy. Either change something, reduce tests, or try to avoid any unnecessary things causing the pipeline to go red.
  • Learning – covered below.

Bonus – End of Year Career

This isn’t specifically for SQL Server, but it could be. This is a good time of year to stop and try to assess how things went. It’s also good to look forward, and use slower times to make the future better. A few recommendations:

  • Always have a list of things to read/learn/practice. Use slow times to work on something. If nothing else, tackle the Advent of Code.
  • Assess your career – is this the place for you? The job, the employer, the field? Think about what things excite you and what don’t, what make days drag, or go by quickly.
  • Plan for the future – Make a few career goals. I’ve done this for a few years, and it helps me continue to learn and grow.
Posted in Blog | Tagged , , | Comments Off on T-SQL Tuesday #157–The End of Year

Daily Coping 13 Dec 2022

Posted on December 13, 2022 by way0utwest

Today’s coping tip is to contact someone you can’t be with to see how they are.

Maybe the one thing the pandemic did for me is make me think about other people more. More people and more often.

I’ve been randomly contacting people for a few years. Often people I’d expect to see at some point during the year, but knowing I wouldn’t. It’s been good to chat and share a few messages.

A couple weeks ago I found some old pictures from the past of various people. I sent them over in a message to say hi, remember a time we were together and check in on how they were doing. It was a fun few minutes out of my day.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQL Server Central newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Daily Coping 13 Dec 2022