Why you should move your Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 workloads to Azure

There couldn't be a better time to move SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 workloads to Azure as Microsoft will soon withdraw its support for both servers while extending its Azure offering. From July 9 2019, there will be no security updates for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and none for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 from January 14 2020, which could lead to potential security and compliance risks. But the good news is that for businesses facing end of support for SQL Server 2008, Microsoft is offering three years free security updates for SQL Server 2008 database server workloads hosted in Azure

These new Microsoft moves give businesses a great opportunity to upgrade legacy on-premises database technology to address the shortcomings of less agile on-premises solutions while consolidating their environment, optimizing performance, recovery, and provisioning and minimizing costs by taking advantage of unique cloud offerings and not having to pay up front for resources

What's more, by moving on-premises database servers and applications to the cloud, businesses will efficiently address a number of key business issues including:

• Rising on-premises IT infrastructure costs

• Aging or out-of-support legacy IT infrastructure

• Increasing security threats

• Storage capacity limitation

• High availability and disaster recovery needs

• Compliance regulations

• Support ending for WIndows SQL 2008 and WIndows server 2008

And they'll gain:

• Great agility for business growth

• The benefits of the planned Microsoft datacenters in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Bahrain, including local data sovereignty and increased data latency

What happens if you don't do anything?

Well, to put it bluntly, you're are putting your entire database content, including vital business information at critical risk. You won't get any more updates or support from Microsoft and you lose the peace of mind that comes from the existing security provision. Isn't that a risk too many?

Easily transition to Azure

To enable you to transition to the Azure cloud in the most efficient way possible, we're introducing Cobweb Data Moderization which helps tranfer existing on-premises legacy databases to Azure using industry best practice and proven software database migration tools.

Using cloud transition experience built up over 20 years, Cobweb experts work in partnership with your team to assess, migrate to, and optimize your SQL database workloads in Microsoft Azure cloud. We can also provide on-going service management of the database workloads.

The service operates in four distinct phases: assessment, migration, optimization and management.

Phase One sees the Cobweb team gaining a full understanding of your business transformation goals before reviewing your existing IT infrastructure and applications to evaluate migration readiness, identifying a future-proof IT roadmap and proposing a new database architecture in Microsoft Azure

Phase Two comes into play once an agreed target solution is reached. The Cobweb team moves your infrastructure and database workload into Azure either through a simple and cost-effective 'lift and shift' of your existing IT infrastructure and database server applications or by moving applicable IT infrastructure elements to Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions, to drive scalability and cost efficiency gains

Phase Three: optimization seeks to maximize ongoing database performance, monitor your cloud spend and use to control costs and use security and management tools to govern, secure and monitor your cloud investment

Phase Four: manage sees Cobweb provide Microsoft SQL database server monitoring, reactive support and security and patch management

The clock is ticking and with just six months until Microsoft withdraws support from SQL Server 2008 – shouldn't you be considering the move to Azure and Microsoft's great offer of three years' free security updates?