Version upgrades, server-to-server moves, and cloud migrations to Azure SQL, Managed Instance, SQL VMs, or AWS RDS. Assessed, tested, and validated - with downtime measured in minutes, not weekends.
SQL Server 2012 and 2014 are both past the end of extended support, which means no security patches - a compliance problem as much as a technical one. SQL Server 2016 reaches end of extended support in July 2026. If you're running any of these versions in production, migration planning isn't optional any more; it's overdue.
Beyond staying supported, newer versions deliver real gains: Query Store, Intelligent Query Processing, Accelerated Database Recovery, and substantial security improvements arrived across SQL Server 2016 through 2022. Many workloads get measurably faster after an upgrade with no application changes at all. Not sure whether it's time? Our guide on when to migrate SQL Server walks through the decision.
Migration is also the natural moment to fix accumulated problems - undersized storage, poor file layout, configuration drift, and SQL Server sprawl. Done properly, you land on a platform that's faster, cheaper to licence, and easier to support than the one you left.
Every migration follows the same disciplined path - the discipline is what makes cutover day boring, and boring is exactly what you want.
We inventory the current environment - versions, editions, databases, dependencies, deprecated features, and workload characteristics. A health check establishes the performance baseline the new platform has to beat.
We design the target architecture and migration path: side-by-side or in-place, the downtime approach, the cutover sequence, licensing implications, and a tested rollback plan for every step.
Databases are migrated to the target platform in a test pass. We verify application connectivity, compare query performance against the baseline, validate jobs, logins, and linked servers, and rehearse the cutover.
The production cutover runs during an agreed maintenance window, following the rehearsed runbook. Final data synchronisation, connection string switchover, and smoke testing - with rollback available at every stage.
Post-migration we confirm backups, maintenance jobs, monitoring, and security are fully operational, then compare performance against the pre-migration baseline and tune the new environment.
The right migration technique depends on your database size, your tolerance for downtime, and the target platform. We choose the approach - you get the outcome.
For large databases, we pre-seed the target with a full backup, keep it current with log backups or an availability group replica, then cut over with a final tail-log restore. Downtime is limited to the final switchover - typically minutes.
For Azure targets we use the appropriate combination of Azure Database Migration Service, native backup to URL, and transactional replication - selected per database based on size, downtime tolerance, and feature usage.
Every production cutover is rehearsed in a test pass first. The runbook is proven, timings are known, and rollback is planned at each step - so the go/no-go decision is made on evidence, not hope.
Migration decisions and licensing decisions are inseparable. Edition choices, core counts, virtualisation, consolidation opportunities, and cloud options such as Azure Hybrid Benefit all materially change what you pay. We factor licensing into the target design at the assessment stage - at a strategic level, alongside your licensing reseller - rather than leaving it as a surprise after cutover. Consolidating sprawling instances during migration is often where the biggest savings hide; our consultancy team designs for this from day one.
Every migration we run starts with a SQL Server health check of the source environment. It surfaces the misconfigurations and bottlenecks you don't want to faithfully replicate onto new infrastructure, and it establishes the performance baseline we validate against after cutover.
After cutover, a post-migration health check confirms the new environment is configured to best practice - backups verified, maintenance in place, security reviewed, and performance compared directly against the pre-migration baseline. You get documented evidence the migration improved things, not just moved them.
Moving to Azure? Our Azure SQL and Managed Instance services cover platform selection (Azure SQL Database vs Managed Instance vs SQL VM), migration execution, and ongoing management once you're there. We also migrate workloads to AWS RDS for SQL Server, and back on-premises when cloud economics don't stack up.
For complex programmes - consolidations, multi-server moves, or architecture redesigns alongside the migration - our consultancy and projects team runs the engagement end to end with a design-first methodology.
It depends on database size, complexity, and the number of instances involved. A single-instance side-by-side migration is typically completed within days to a couple of weeks including assessment, testing, and cutover. Larger consolidation or cloud migration programmes run longer. The production cutover itself is usually measured in minutes to a few hours.
For most migrations we use pre-seeding techniques (log shipping, availability groups, or replication) so the bulk of data movement happens while production stays online. The actual outage is limited to the final cutover - commonly minutes. Where zero downtime is a hard requirement, we design the approach around that constraint from the start.
Side-by-side is our default recommendation: it gives you a clean target environment, a full rehearsal opportunity, and a trivially simple rollback (the old server is still there). In-place upgrades can make sense for non-critical instances where new infrastructure isn't justified - but they carry more risk and we plan rollback carefully when we use them.
It depends on your workload, feature usage, and cost profile. Azure SQL Managed Instance suits lift-and-shift migrations needing near-full SQL Server compatibility; Azure SQL Database suits cloud-native applications; SQL VMs suit workloads needing OS-level control. We assess your environment and model the options - including staying on-premises where that's genuinely the better answer.
They're all part of the migration scope. We migrate and validate jobs, logins (with SIDs preserved to avoid orphaned users), linked servers, credentials, certificates, and server-level configuration - the pieces that ad-hoc migrations most commonly miss.
Yes - this is one of the most common migrations we run. Both versions are past end of extended support and no longer receive security patches. We assess for deprecated features and compatibility issues, test your databases against the target version, and manage the upgrade end to end.
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