AS SQL Server 2012 fell out of Mainstream Support on July 11, 2017, and SQL Server 2014 will fall out of Mainstream Support on July 9, 2019, and as both SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 will be falling out of Extended Support on July 9, 2019, So many users want to upgrade from these legacy versions of SQL Server to a more modern version (either 2016 or 2017).
If you want to upgrade to a modern version of SQL Server, then you can move to SQL Server 2017
Note: Only if you have 3rd party software that is explicitly not supported on SQL Server 2017, then it could be a blocker.
Refer to this video to learn how to install Microsoft SQL Server 2017:
Reasons to upgrade to SQL Server 2017 are listed below:
1. SQL Server 2017: New Engine feature
Multiple numbers of useful new Engine features in SQL Server 2017 are as follows
A. Automatic Plan Correction: This feature helps to detect and automatically correct many query plan stability issues.
B. Adaptive Query Processing (AQP) (This is enabled with compatibility mode 140): This is helpful for batch mode operations used with Columnstore indexes.
Here, AQP has three components, which include:
a: Batch Mode Adaptive Memory Grant Feedback
b: Batch Mode Adaptive Joins
c: Interleaved Execution for Multi-Statement Table Valued Functions.
2. There are also multiple numbers of troubleshooting and diagnostic improvements available that make the life of a DBA much easier!
3. Replication Enhancements: Microsoft has made it possible to protect a remote distribution database in an Availability Group with SQL Server 2017 CU6.
They have also added the ability to dynamically reload transaction Agent profile parameters in SQL Server 2017 CU3. This makes it much easier to tune and maintain your replication topology than it was in the past.
4. Apart from that, there will be monthly Cumulative Updates for the first year, and then quarterly Cumulative Updates for the next four years after that. This means that defects will be fixed more quickly during the first year after release.
5. SQL Server 2017 also releases new functionality and other product improvements, which are quite often focused on improving performance.
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