One of the classic tenets in upgrading Microsoft technology seems to be that it's safer to wait for Service Pack 1 (SP1) before committing to the next version of any platform. There have been people asking if you will upgrade Windows, wait for Dynamics, and more. Last week I saw a blog from Gethryn Ellis that asked if his readers were waiting for SQL Server 2012 SP1.
I've had times when Service Packs that installed smoothly and essentially had no impact on production systems, and I've had times when the installation blue screened my test systems. During the latter times I was extremely glad I'd decided to test the SP and not blindly install it on a production system. That is one of the things that worries me about cloud computing. I need to be sure that patches work on my systems.
This Friday, however, I wanted to take the temperature of the community regarding the latest version of SQL Server. I am not wondering if you are upgrading, or if you have plans to upgrade to SQL Server 2012. Instead, I wanted to ask you this:
Do you feel SQL Server 2012 RTM is stable enough to install on your production servers?
I assume you'll test it, but assuming it works with your application, assuming that cost is not an issue, is the codebase stable enough for you?
I don't have any plans to upgrade SQLServerCentral anytime soon. We upgraded last year and not many of the new features will actually make a difference to our application. Licensing is also an issue as we run Standard Edition, and the cost to move to Enterprise Edition s prohibitive. As much as I'd like to implement AlwaysOn in production, it will have to be limited to test systems for me.
However if cost weren't an issue, and resources were available, I'd upgrade. I think SQL Server has been getting more and more solid with every release, and I think SQL Server 2012 is as stable as any of the other recent releases. Let us know today if you feel the same way.
Steve Jones
The Voice of the DBA Podcasts
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