Book Image

SQL Server 2019 Administrator's Guide - Second Edition

By : Marek Chmel, Vladimír Mužný
Book Image

SQL Server 2019 Administrator's Guide - Second Edition

By: Marek Chmel, Vladimír Mužný

Overview of this book

SQL Server is one of the most popular relational database management systems developed by Microsoft. This second edition of the SQL Server Administrator's Guide will not only teach you how to administer an enterprise database, but also help you become proficient at managing and keeping the database available, secure, and stable. You’ll start by learning how to set up your SQL Server and configure new and existing environments for optimal use. The book then takes you through designing aspects and delves into performance tuning by showing you how to use indexes effectively. You’ll understand certain choices that need to be made about backups, implement security policy, and discover how to keep your environment healthy. Tools available for monitoring and managing a SQL Server database, including automating health reviews, performance checks, and much more, will also be discussed in detail. As you advance, the book covers essential topics such as migration, upgrading, and consolidation, along with the techniques that will help you when things go wrong. Once you’ve got to grips with integration with Azure and streamlining big data pipelines, you’ll learn best practices from industry experts for maintaining a highly reliable database solution. Whether you are an administrator or are looking to get started with database administration, this SQL Server book will help you develop the skills you need to successfully create, design, and deploy database solutions.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
1
Section 1: Provisioning the SQL Server Environment
4
Section 2: Server and Database Maintenance
9
Section 3: High Availability and the Cloud with SQL Server 2019

The importance of keeping up with latest version

An important reason to upgrade is to continue to obtain the latest support for SQL Server. Once the mainstream support for SQL Server ends, there will be no more service packs or cumulative updates bringing fixes and updates to your current version of SQL Server.

As you can see from the following table, just three SQL Server versions are supported as of now (summer 2020) and those are SQL Server 2016, SQL Server 2017, and the current SQL Server 2019:

Fig. 7.1 – SQL version support end dates

Although many of the older versions are not supported anymore, this does not mean they are not used in production environments. The preceding table does not list all the SQL Server versions. There are even older systems that can be used today, but those fell out of support a long time ago. Also, note that SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 share an end date for mainstream support, although...