2005 or 2008

  • Hi,

    We're currently looking to upgrade some or our infrastructure and budgets are being assessed.

    I was hoping to go to a 2008 64 BIT environment to take advantage of the extra memory capabilities. But to do so we'd need to purchase a new per-processor license at around £4k per processor(£8k in total).

    So it looks like we're able to go to 2005 64BIT at minimal cost, on the current licensing,we're currently 2005 32 BIT.

    Is this a short term measure, as someone told me 2005 will be 'end-of-life' in the next two years? What would that mean to us? No more SP's or hotfixes?

    Any primary benefits of 2008 over 2005 I could highlight?

    Has anyone else had this situation?

    Many thanks,

    Paul

  • I would go for 2008. Loads of cool features to help...

    auditing, filestream, extended events, policies, sparse columns, improved RS, improved mirroring, additional datatypes, etc, etc the list goes on. You know your environment best have a look at Google for the full list of new features and draw-up a comparison.

  • I suspect that this would be a more short-term solution than you were expecting:

    http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/search/default.aspx?sort=PN&alpha=SQL+Server+2005&Filter=FilterNO - mainstream support ends April of next year. The FAQ at http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifepolicy explains the different support dates.

    I suspect it would be a false economy as support (from MS and elsewhere) and interest in a product going out of support will reduce. 2008 does have several management and monitoring tools that make it an improvement over 2005.

    I understand the short-term gain that is made by staying with 2005, but those responsible for the budgets won't like having to pay out money again in a few months time, unless they pay for extended support of 2005.

    For details of what 2008 has: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645993.aspx#Mgmt_tools (actually R2 - the latest version of SQL Server), or prettier version (for the managers) http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/overview.aspx.

  • At this point in time, coming up on 2011, SQL Server 2005 is six years old and 2008R2 is 9 months old. There'll be a new version (either SQL Server 2011 or SQL Server 11, depending on the marketing guys decisions) in a little over a year. I could not get behind moving systems to 2005 at this point time, even with the added cost to licensing 2008R2.

    "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
    - Theodore Roosevelt

    Author of:
    SQL Server Execution Plans
    SQL Server Query Performance Tuning

  • Every company I've been at has an upgrade license where we were licensed for SQL Server, period..regardless of version. We could upgrade from 2005 to 2008R2 at no extra cost.

    Have you looked into the cost of getting an upgrade license instead?

  • Licensing highly depends on company size. Some companies get Enterprise agreements that allow upgrades at minimal cost.

    SQL 2008 was supposed to be the same upgrade cost as moving to 2008, with a price increase for 2008 R2. I would double check, but while SP4 for 2005 should be coming out late this year or early next year, that will be the last bit of development done for 2005. No more support, so potentially you will be out of support.

    Practically, if your application works now on 2005, it will work for the future. There are still people running SQL 6.5 and SQL 7, and while it can be problematic for newer OSes and DR, it works. With VMs, it could work a long time.

    Security patches should still come out for a few years if needed on 2005, and CSS support will still take your call. Just no development resources.

    If you move to 2008 (or R2), there are features like compression that can mitigate the costs of the upgrade. There are also better T-SQL features that might give you boosts in performance and better development if that is something you can use. The core engine should perform better as well.

  • I would go with 2008. It is solid and not as pricey as 2008R2.

    Jason...AKA CirqueDeSQLeil
    _______________________________________________
    I have given a name to my pain...MCM SQL Server, MVP
    SQL RNNR
    Posting Performance Based Questions - Gail Shaw[/url]
    Learn Extended Events

  • In terms of the support you would get from MS Steve makes good points and covers it well. You would get extended support till 2016 and that means if you hit a known bug they will provide the fix. they just won't provide new fixes for new bugs, the chances of hitting a new bug are minimal. So I don't think support is an issue.

    Is there any cost at all in going from 32bit to 64bit? The license costs are the same, or is that because they will only sell you a backward compatibility license at 2008R2 prices?

    there is also the question as to which versions the app supports?

    It sounds like you are on standard edition so my preference would be 2008R2 to get the backup compression and save costs on disk and tape, but if money was an issue I would still be comfortable on 2005 at this point. there would be pressure to upgrade in the next 2-3 years though.

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  • CirquedeSQLeil (10/8/2010)


    I would go with 2008. It is solid and not as pricey as 2008R2.

    If you are buying licenses now they will charge you R2 prices even if you opt for 2008.

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  • george sibbald (10/8/2010)


    CirquedeSQLeil (10/8/2010)


    I would go with 2008. It is solid and not as pricey as 2008R2.

    If you are buying licenses now they will charge you R2 prices even if you opt for 2008.

    Good info.

    Jason...AKA CirqueDeSQLeil
    _______________________________________________
    I have given a name to my pain...MCM SQL Server, MVP
    SQL RNNR
    Posting Performance Based Questions - Gail Shaw[/url]
    Learn Extended Events

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