The end of MS SQL Server 2008 is looming.
Microsoft has put the word out that its stopping support for two of its 2008 releases: SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 in July 2019 while the Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 follows suit in January 2020.
This means three things:
- No support
- No security updates
- And that it’s time for DBAs to step up
Why? Because having unsupported servers in your environment can be one of the riskiest things you could do. When your server is unsupported and not upgraded with the latest security updates, you are putting all your data at risk because of the exposed vulnerabilities.
And depending on the country and the industry you are part of, there are policies that require you to have only systems that are currently supported by the vendor. Unexpected cyber attacks and compliance concerns are just some of the problems that these unsupported platforms open up.
To tackle all these, Microsoft has suggested two measures:
- Upgrade to SQL Server 2017 on-premise
- Migrate to Azure with free security updates
Or
You can also purchase the Extended Security Updates for up to 3 years if you cannot migrate before the deadline. Each of the options has their own advantages.
Upgrading to 2017 is always beneficial with the increased performance, availability, security and all the improvements that are present in the cloud analytics. SQL Server 2017 also brought about a number of different benefits like Always Encrypted that keeps the PII data secured through encryption at-rest and during transmission and the new PolyBase that helps you query directly from the storage without the need to learn any Hadoop related tech.
Rehosting your setup to an Azure SQL Database Managed Instance without any app-code changes is also possible. Apart from this, the computing and storage scalability that Azure brings to the table has great benefits. From what Microsoft has been saying, it seems you can save up to 55% on your migration expenses. While they’ve been trying all possible means to get people to move from on-premise to Azure, this migration-at-your-own-pace makes it seem rational to consider moving to the cloud.
Does that mean moving to Azure or upgrading to 2017 is enough to get you covered?
No.
We stack up the latest security measures to protect our data, only to be breached by a more innovative cyber threat.
At this moment, somewhere across the globe, people might be working on the next big Ransomware.
We can’t keep upgrading our security systems every time the threat evolves. While it is inevitable to upgrade, there is an old-fashioned solution.
Backups
Having a copy of your data stored elsewhere is always helpful. That is why, even with the staggering growth we’ve witnessed in cyber-security, compliance laws like GDPR insist so much on backups and how they’re stored.
Vembu offers a suite of products that cover a wide range of backups. From backing up your virtual machines running on a host server to backing up a single application, like Microsoft SQL Server.
Backing up your SQL Server with Vembu can be effortless and rewarding at the same time. Supporting versions from 2000 to 2016, backing up your database server involves only three steps.
Step one involves you to choose the databases for backup. You can manually select the databases or choose based on the recovery models: Full, Simple & Bulk_Logged.
Once done selecting the databases, set the backup scheduling you look for. From daily or weekly to monthly backups, the backup schedule can be defined as per your backup policy. There is also an option for you to run the backup job only once. Depending upon your requirement, you can also opt for Differential backup and Transaction Log backups.
Once you start backing up, you can relax as your data is not as vulnerable to data loss as it was before.
There may be a final step you need to take, but for now, covered.
Follow our Twitter and Facebook feeds for new releases, updates, insightful posts and more.
