Microsoft SQL Server 2008 End-of-Service is Here: What it Means for You

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As of July 9, 2019, Microsoft will be ending support for SQL Server 2008. End-of-support for Windows Server 2008 will follow on January 14, 2020. While this may seem a straightforward idea, the implications for IT users on these services are important.

Beyond these dates, those who do not upgrade their service will not only be out of compliance, but will also be exposed to significant security risks. While upgrading may be the knee jerk reaction, now is the time to consider you options. You can continue to pay higher rates for additional support on prem, stay out of compliance, or consider a key alternative: the cloud.

Why Migrate your Microsoft Workloads to the Cloud?

Migrating to the cloud is the natural progression for many businesses. Moving to the cloud now can create major cost savings not just in the pay-for-use model, but by eliminating costs around maintenance, licensing, and data center management.

Another benefit of the cloud is automation. By eliminating the need for repetitive management tasks that eat up time and resources, employee time can be better spent attending to more important activities, while also eliminating capacity for human error in maintenance.

Picking the Right Migration Strategy

Choosing to migrate your Microsoft Workloads to the cloud is not the only choice to be made. Once you make the decision, there are still a number of options regarding how to deploy your SQL server. You can choose to stay on a SQL server, rehosting or replatforming to an Amazon RDS service, or you can choose to modernize instead, refactoring to adopt cloud native services. Here’s how those options beak down:

Rehosting

Rehosting your SQL server on an Amazon EC2 instance is a good choice of those looking for a familiar cloud experience while maintaining full workload control. In addition to full administrative control and a familiar workload environment, rehosting offers all the same SQL server features.

Replatforming

For those without the capacity or resources to manage IT resources, replatforming with Amazon RDS is best. Amazon RDS allows for architecture optimization while also avoiding management overhead, allowing for greater focus on business rather than on up-keeping infrastructure. There are proven patching and backups, as well as high availability

Refactoring

If the goal is modernization, then the answer is refactoring, either with Amazon DynamoDB or Amazon RedShift. Refactoring can significantly reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by eliminating licensing needs. In addition, AWS offers a number of tools and services to assist in refactoring efforts and better aid integration into the cloud ecosystem.

Why Onica?

As an AWS Premier Consulting Partner with the Microsoft Workloads Competency, Onica has extensive experience with managing Microsoft Workloads on AWS. A migration expert, Onica can help your business run integrated Microsoft Solutions on AWS. For more information on how Onica can help you with Microsoft on AWS, check out our other Microsoft Workload related offerings:

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