Why you should upgrade to Microsoft SQL Server 2008…

In slow economic times, it is often hard for customers to justify upgrading technology when they cannot easily identify specific benefits they will enjoy as a result of the upgrade.  For those Microsoft Dynamics GP customers who haven’t yet upgraded to SQL Server 2008, I think you may find the results of our recent Performance Benchmark tests to be reason enough to make the jump!

In the latest test results utilizing a very large sample Microsoft Dynamics GP database, the application showed an 18% increase in performance through upgrading from SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition to SQL Server 2008 Enterprise edition when using Row Compression. Even without Compression enabled (which is a NEW feature to the 2008 release), SQL Server 2008 still showed a 9% gain in performance when compared with SQL Server 2005. 

If that isn’t reason enough, an additional benefit demonstrated by the benchmark performance tests was how enabling Compression reduced the disk drive space requirements of the large sample Microsoft Dynamics GP company database used in the test, as outlined in the table below.

These results clearly show that upgrading to SQL Server 2008 Enterprise edition can have a significant impact on system performance, especially when Page or Row compression is enabled on select tables in the company database. Also, considerable amounts of hard disk space can be conserved by the Compression functionality offered in SQL Server 2008, allowing customers to perhaps postpone hardware upgrades when facing low disk capacity.

Microsoft Dynamics GP Partners and Customers can check out the full results of the test by downloading the new White Paper available here:
PartnerSource: https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/newsevents/news/MDGPSQLWhitepaper

CustomerSource: https://mbs.microsoft.com/customersource/documentation/whitepapers/MDGPSQLWhitepaper

Enjoy your weekend everyone!

AndyW

PS: I almost forgot to mention another HUGE reason to upgrade to SQL Server 2008.  The upgraded Report Builder tool and the new features in SQL Reporting Services represent tremendous value to our customers as well.  You can follow all the happenings of these tools over on the SQL Server Reporting team blog here https://blogs.msdn.com/sqlrsteamblog/.