One Peril of Database Proliferation
By now many of us have upgraded from SQL Server 2008R2 and we’re on the “regular Cumulative Updates” train now. For the rest, it’ll (hopefully) happen soon. And since we want a long runway, we’re upgrading to SQL Server 2016 or 2017. Current software! New features! Mainstream support! But…there’s a catch.
Staying current
DBAs & sysadmins don’t want to fall too far behind on patching for a variety of reasons. It used to be that monthly patch cycles were primarily for Windows Server. When we were running SQL Server 2008R2, our last significant update was years ago. SQL Server 2012 is now out of support and isn’t receiving updates very often. Point being, a SQL Server update install has been the exception, not the norm, in the patch cycle for many of us the past couple years.