1. Upgrade to Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

2. Introduction Upgrading to SQL 2008 R2 is a costly venture. It can, however, have a positive effect on the TCO of the database infrastructure. Organizations must assess the improvements of SQL 2008 R2 and decide whether an upgrade is necessary and feasible. This solution set will cover SQL Server 2008 R2 from highlighting which organizations should consider an upgrade, to functionality improvements, and planning up to implementation. It will help readers, considering an upgrade to SQL 2008 R2, understand: Upgrade consideration. Which organizations Info-Tech recommends consider an upgrade to 2008 R2, and which should avoid the release. Improved functionality. What has and has not been improved in 2008 R2, with specific focus on the impacts of these changes to TCO for the organization. Time & effort. The effort organizations have spent on planning each aspect of the upgrade, and an outline of what they did to make the upgrade go smoothly. Microsoft tools & resources. The tools and resources provided by Microsoft to aid with compatibility and upgrade issues. Project management & closure. Tips and tricks for managing the project and budget, as well as issue resolution and closure logs, budgeting, and project management tools.

3. Executive Summary Microsoft’s SQL Server 2008 R2 offering is largely unimproved from its predecessor, SQL Server 2008, but should be considered by organizations with Software Assurance (SA), and those looking to lower the TCO of third-party BI tools or implement BI without increasing their budget. Licensing has become more expensive in comparison to the schema available under SQL Server 2008 – organizations that wish to continue using the unlimited licensing setup of SQL 2008 should stay with their current setup, or move to SQL Server 2008 R2 Datacenter Edition at $57,498. Consolidating multiple database instances to a single SQL server is the most common method of consolidation amongst Info-Tech clients as it enables them to leverage greater hardware efficiency and maximize licensing benefits; this is the simplest option when databases have similar security, manageability, and compatibility requirements, provided hardware can sustain the required level of performance. As part of the Business Intelligence (BI) offering, Analysis and Reporting Services have both been drastically improved, enabling the organization to lower TCO by improving scalability, productivity, and integration with Microsoft Office. Planning for the upgrade process is much less intensive than other major infrastructure projects, such as a data center move; however, Info-Tech recommends assembling a Steering Committee, Upgrade Team, and Testing Team to facilitate the funding & approval, execution, and testing phases of the upgrade, respectively. Inventorying applications and developing an upgrade strategy were cited as the heaviest-effort areas of the upgrade planning process by Info-Tech survey respondents, regardless of what version of SQL they were upgrading from, highlighting the importance of these tasks for those organizations considering an upgrade. Once the upgrade is complete, take the time to process and resolve issues from the SQL Server Upgrade Issue Resolution & Change Order Template, and conducting a project post-mortem debrief to ensure the next upgrade goes smoother.SQL Server Upgrade Issue Resolution & Change Order Template

4. Roadmap Assess the Opportunity Planning Discovery Execution Closure Determine the Benefits SQL Server 2008 R2 offers a greatly improved BI package, including upgraded Analysis Services and Report Services capabilities. Organizations interested in BI, but lacking the budget to implement a third- party solution, may want to consider an upgrade of their SQL setup, especially if Software Assurance is in place. Understand the Differences SQL Server 2008 R2 is a full-release from Microsoft and carries one major difference, which organizations must consider before committing to an upgrade: licensing. The new licensing schema from Microsoft changes the way organization’s are charged using Enterprise Edition in R2 vs. Enterprise Edition in 2008. To maintain a licensing setup that allows for unlimited instances under a single enterprise license, the organization must remain on 2008 or move to R2’s Datacenter Edition at a cost of $57, 498.

5. Only upgrade to 2008 R2 if the organization requires Business Intelligence, or has Software Assurance SQL Server 2008 R2 is a viable upgrade consideration for firms that have an SA agreement or require BI functionality, but either lack the budget to implement third-party tools or are looking to dislodge third-party tools in order to lower TCO. Upgrade to 2008 R2 Consider 2008 R2 Do you have an SA agreement? Licensing Business Intelligence Yes No Yes Do you currently have a BI solution in place? Are you interested in implementing BI? Yes No Do Not Consider 2008 R2 Are you interested in lowering BI costs? Yes Consider 2008 R2 No Do Not Consider 2008 R2 18% of respondents, to a recent Info-Tech survey, cited moving away from SQL Server as a primary reason for not upgrading their database; of those respondents, 43% are moving away from SQL in favor of a SaaS deployment.

6. New compression features drastically improve TCO, but licensing eats into the cost benefits; core availability remains unimproved SQL 2008 offers a backup with compression option that was unavailable in SQL 2005. This new backup option reduces the disk size of backups by 20-60%, resulting in a lower TCO for organizations with hefty storage costs. SQL 2008 sees minimal improvements in availability over its predecessors, but does bring to light some improvements when updating or patching a current SQL setup. The benefits associated with availability are contingent on the organization having Windows Server 2008 in place. SQL 2008 provides support for more processors and memory to consolidate multiple databases onto more powerful hardware. Less hardware results in lower power consumption, decreasing the TCO of the servers and database. As with availability, the benefits associated with scalability are contingent on the organization having Windows Server 2008 in place. Licensing for 2008 R2 has been revised from its predecessor, 2008. Organizations currently running 2008 with Software Assurance can maintain favorable licensing conditions, but new adopters will feel the sting of R2’s licensing changes. Storage Availability Scalability Licensing

7. Backup with compression functionality cuts storage requirements & costs by as much as 72% Storage Introduced in SQL 2008, Microsoft states backup with compression is capable of compressing database backups by 20-60%. Actual compression rate may vary, though the following results have been achieved. SQL 2005 – 6 minutes compression time 3.5 GB Original Database Size 3.5 GB Backup Database Size Standard Backup 0 % Storage Reduction SQL 2008/SQL 2008 R2 – 3 minutes compression time 3.5 GB Original Database Size 986 MB Backup Database Size Compression Backup 72 % Backup with compression saves the organization time and money as backups take less time and disk space, resulting in operational cost savings on both fronts. If storage cost is a major concern for the organization, SQL 2008 relieves some financial pressure. Storage Reduction

8. Do not look to 2008 R2 for significant availability improvements Availability SQL Server 2008 is similar to other Microsoft server products in that it adheres to the better together mantra. When paired with Windows Server 2008, availability in SQL Server 2008 is much more powerful than without. SQL Server 2008 R2, however, does not improve upon the availability functionality of SQL Server 2008. SQL 2008 provides improved availability during updates as service packs and cumulative updates can be applied using a “rolling update” methodology in clustered environments. This allows the organization to apply patches first to passive nodes, then switch those nodes to active and re-apply the patch to the now passive nodes, decreasing downtime to a matter of minutes. Database Mirroring Increases availability, providing near-complete database redundancy during disasters or planned upgrades. Does not require proprietary hardware and provides automatic client redirection. Log Shipping Automatically backs up, copies and restores transaction logs on standby servers. Reduces the load on the primary server by using a secondary server for read- only query processing. Failover Clustering Provides server-level redundancy on a certified Microsoft Cluster Services configuration. Enables seamless failover capabilities by sharing disk access between nodes and restarting SQL on a working node during failure. Peer-to-Peer Replication Replicates changes at near real-time while databases handle primary responsibilities. Protect against accidental conflicts with SQL Server 2008 conflict detection.

9. SQL Server 2008 R2 offers scale-up & scale-out solutions, but remains largely unchanged from 2005’s offering Scalability SQL Server 2008 R2 leverages underlying improvements from Windows Server 2008 R2 to support database instances running on larger hardware. Scaling up on more powerful hardware is a common approach to addressing performance problems associated with very large database instances. Windows Server 2008 R2 can now support 256 cores; 4x the previous limit of 64 cores. More Cores Support has been added allowing for the dynamic addition of CPUs to a running system. CPUs can be added physically with new hardware, logically via online hardware portioning, or virtually through a virtualization layer. Hot Add CPU Releases of SQL prior to SQL Server 2005 supported dynamic memory allocation, but was restricted to memory available at startup. This limitation has been removed as of SQL Server 2005. Hot Add Memory SQL Server 2008 R2 supports the deployment of read-only reporting databases through the scalable shared database feature, allowing the enterprise to scale the operational data on the primary server. Shared Databases Scaling out a database through Peer-to-Peer replication with SQL Server 2008 R2 supports multiple read/write copies of the database across physical servers through replication. Peer-to-Peer Replication Included in SQL Server 2008 R2, the Service Broker supports message queuing, which can be used to distribute database work across multiple instances. Service Broker SQL Server 2008 R2 builds upon previous capabilities to expand a database instance across multiple servers rather than a single, bigger server. Scaling out is a tradeoff between initial hardware cost advantages and increased licensing costs.

10. Be ready to spend more if you do not have Software Assurance; R2’s Enterprise Edition licensing has changed Licensing Under the per processor licensing model, the organization can run up to four operating system environments per license with 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition, resulting in a drastic TCO increase over 2008’s unlimited instances per processor licensing model. Organization’s requiring a licensing model similar to the 2008 Enterprise Edition setup of unlimited virtualized instances should move to SQL 2008 R2 Datacenter Edition, the only SKU in the new lineup that maintains the older licensing model while providing the same BI functionality. $24,999 $86,247 SQL 2008 Enterprise Edition Physical ServerAssuming 12 Virtualized SQL Instances 1 SQL License Assuming 12 Virtualized SQL Instances SQL 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition Physical Server 3 SQL Licenses 47% of Info-Tech clients will remain unaffected by licensing changes 53% of Info-Tech clients will need to consider Datacenter Edition Reduction Ratio ≤ 4:1 ≥

11. If the enterprise requires ≤ 4 SQL instances, implement Enterprise Edition; otherwise, implement Datacenter Edition SQL 2008 R2 Datacenter Edition Physical ServerUnlimited SQL Instances 1 SQL License $57,498 SQL 2008 Enterprise Edition Physical ServerUnlimited SQL Instances 1 SQL License $24,999 SQL 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition Physical Server12 Virtualized SQL Instances 3 SQL Licenses $86,247 SQL 2008 R2’s new licensing schema requires the organization to thoroughly consider its database setup in order to ensure licensing spend is optimized. Organizations that require less than 5 instances of SQL should continue with Enterprise Edition as licensing changes do not come into affect until the number of instances exceeds 4. Organizations that require more than 4 instances of SQL should implement Datacenter Edition to optimize licensing spend.

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