Who am I kidding? You’re not really going to get ready, but let’s talk about this anyway.
SQL Server 2016 mainstream support ends Tuesday, July 13, 2021.
According to Microsoft’s SQL Server support policy, that means from here on out, Microsoft will only deliver security patches, not functional, performance, or stability patches. You can still call Microsoft for help, but if you find a performance issue and they need to build code for a fix, you’ll only be able to get it on the two mainstream supported versions – only SQL Server 2017 and 2019.
To make things even more interesting, SQL Server 2017’s mainstream support is only good through October 2022, and SQL Server 2019 through January 2025.
Microsoft’s current support policy is that new versions only get mainstream support for 5 years. We still don’t have any public previews of the next version of SQL Server, let alone a 2021 release date. Even if Microsoft released the first public betas tomorrow, and gave us RTM this winter, that means that starting October 2022, we’ll be back to only 2 mainstream support versions: 2019, and whatever vNext is.
8 Comments. Leave new
Meanwhile, my company will release no more versions of our product with support for 2008R2.
For real, this time.
Slightly ambiguous!
SQL Server 2016 SP2 mainstream support goes out as far as 07/14/2026 as far as I understand that, so we have another few years yet before we are forced to the reliability mess that is SQL Server 2019.
Nope, that’s the extended support end date.
In the meantime, new projects go live on SQL Server 2014…
Does it looks like Microsoft is killing SQL Server line and forcing cloud adoption?!
Maybe we should also look what DBs are available in the Cloud?
rmg – for the sake of your own career, you should look at what databases are available in the cloud just so you can have that discussion with your developers and business folks. I’m not saying you have to get GOOD at any of them, you should just look.
What is the difference between Mainstream support and Extended Support?
According to Microsoft’s SQL Server support policy, that means from here on out, Microsoft will only deliver security patches, not functional, performance, or stability patches.