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8 Questions to Guide Your Upgrade from SQL Server 2005

These are the key questions every IT team needs to answer as they contemplate a migration toward SQL Server 2014.

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Brien M. Posey is a freelance technical writer who has contributed to dozens of books and is a six-time Microsoft MVP award winner.

IT teams know that ultimately they need to move off of Microsoft SQL Server 2005. It’s a complex process to move SQL Server databases. When an organization is ready to detail its migration plan, here are eight questions it should answer first to help inform its plan:

Will we perform an upgrade or a migration?
Will we need to upgrade the operating system?
Will we need any additional hardware?
Will the transition impact my backup or anti-virus software?
How will we test applications to ensure they work with the new version?
How will we address any applications that are incompatible?
When will the transition process begin, and what IT or support resources will we need?
Which servers will we upgrade first? Find more tactics here for managing a move off of SQL Server 2005 now that Microsoft has shuttered support.

For more on making the migration from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2014 and beyond, check out, "To Avoid Security Pitfalls, Make a Plan to Upgrade to SQL Server 2014."