Tag Archives: Upgrade

Previous SQL Server Updates

Posted on January 9, 2020 by | Leave a comment

Hello everyone, this is John your Austin SQL Server Consultant here and today I am going to answer a question that comes up often so I wanted to blog about it for everyone. The question of the day is where can I download the previous SQL Server Updates?

The History towards Updates

Back in the day when we were young but not a kid anymore there were service packs and cumulative updates. We could download these separately and all of the updates were easy to find. Now today, if you click on a KB article to download an update you get pointed to the latest update as shown below.

Current SQL Server KB articles point to only the latest update.

How far is My SQL Server on Updates?

This is also another great question. My favorite place to find all the history of updates toward SQL Server is the SQL Server Build List Blog. You can cross-reference this towards your version by running the following query below.

You can use SELECT @@VERSION to get your current version number.
You can use SELECT @@VERSION to get your current version number.

I fully get exactly why Microsoft is trying to point everyone to the latest update. Normally, it makes perfect sense but let’s take a look at today Jan 9th, 2020. I am planning to update SQL Server 2017 to CU17. Its been out for two months. Today CU18 is released and if I wasn’t careful I would have downloaded a different update than expected.

SQL Server Blog List is a great resource for finding a list of all SQL Server Updates
SQL Server Blog List is a great resource for finding a list of all SQL Server Updates

Getting a previous SQL Server Update

So, on to the solution. It’s actually an easy one but also one that is easy to overlook as well. Let’s go back to the new standard update page for SQL Server updates.

That is right, the Microsoft Update Catalog is your best friend to find all your updates for Microsoft products including SQL Server. You can search for the product you want. For example, in this case, I am looking for SQL Server 2017 and can see all the previous updates for SQL Server.

All SQL Server Updates Can be Found in the Microsoft Update Catalog.
All the SQL Server Updates can be found in the Microsoft Update Catalog

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Upgrading SQL Server 2016 Release Candidate to General Availability

Posted on June 1, 2016 by | 4 comments

I have a client that wants to run on the latest and greatest version of SQL Server.  We have been testing on RCs (Release Candidate), and we are in the process of upgrading non-production environments to RTM GA (General Availability) as it was released today on June 1st, 2016 . When SQL Server 2014 RTM’ed (is that a word?) upgrades from the latest RC was supported.  I expect the same with SQL Server 2016. Currently, this isn’t specified in the SQL 2016 Release Notes.  I will update the post when it’s confirmed.  I am not a SQL Server MVP so I have one sending a message to their message board to see if we can get confirmation on if this upgrade will be supported.  Obviously, I wouldn’t recommend doing this with your live production instances of SQL Server until it is confirmed. Even, if this isn’t supported, I have a automated install process so it wouldn’t take us much time to start fresh.

Read The Release Notes

Please read the release notes. There actually might be a few things you need to complete before upgrading to GA especially if you are using Stretch Databases.

Everyone, should validate if they need to apply KB 3138367. msvcr120.dll should be version 12.0.40649.5 or higher.

Here are screen shots of validating that even Windows 2012 R2 Server with SQL 2016 RC3 needs the .NET update.

preKB3138367

Here I am applying KB 3138367.

KB3138367

KB3138367finished

This is restart number one for anyone who is counting at home.

validateKB3138367

This validates that msvcp120.dll is on the recommended version 12.00.40649.5 by the SQL Server 2016 Release Notes (Seriously, please read these..)

 

Questions You Should Ask Before Upgrading?

Does the business need to or wants to upgrade? Will this upgrade even be possible? Just because it was allowed in SQL 2014 doesn’t mean it will be possible with SQL Server 2016.  Will it be supported? Can I change editions from Evaluation to Developer (Now free in SQL 2016) or Enterprise, Standard?

Upgrading SQL Server 2016 RC3 to GA

The following are the screen shots. I will add some more detailed text in here tonight per step.

Upgrade1

Upgrade2

I am using the developer edition for testing here. It’s cool that I can flip from evaluation to developer mode.

Upgrade3

Upgrade4

Upgrade5

Upgrade6

Upgrade7

Here we can see that it is possible to upgrade RC3 as its detected as an existing upgradable version of SQL Server for SQL 2016 GA.

Upgrade8

Upgrade9

The instance ID changes even though we are able to keep the same named instance. This gets up a separate root folder for the SQL 2016 GA install.

Upgrade10_NotExpected

The server configuration caught be off guard as I expected seeing the database engine and sql agent services listed as well.

Upgrade11

Upgrade12

Upgrade12b

Upgrade13

 

Upgrade14_Finished
Upgrade14_SSMS

Finally, you can see the SQL 2016 RC3 Evaluation Edition was able to be upgraded to SQL Server 2016 GA. I was also able to change this from Evaluation Edition to Developer Edition as well.

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