Kicking off a wave of launch activities for SQL Server 2016, Microsoft has also revealed plans to bring SQL Server to Linux.
The company says SQL Server 2016 is the most significant release of the product yet and that it has a number of new capabilities, including:
• Groundbreaking security encryption capabilities that enable data to always be encrypted at rest, in motion and in-memory to deliver maximum security protection
• In-memory database support for every workload with performance increases up to 30-100x
• Incredible Data Warehousing performance with the #1, #2 and #3 TPC-H 10 Terabyte benchmarks for non-clustered performance, and the #1 SAP SD Two-Tier performance benchmark on windows
• Business Intelligence for every employee on every device – including new mobile BI support for iOS, Android and Windows Phone devices
• Advanced analytics using our new R support that enables customers to do realtime predictive analytics on both operational and analytic data
• Unique cloud capabilities that enable customers to deploy hybrid architectures that partition data workloads across on-premises and cloud based systems to save costs and increase agility
“These improvements, and many more, are all built into SQL Server and bring you not just a new database but a complete platform for data management, business analytics and intelligent apps – one that can be used in a consistent way across both on-premises and the cloud,” Microsoft says. “In fact, over the last year we’ve been using the SQL Server 2016 code-base to run in production more than 1.4 million SQL Databases in the cloud using our Azure SQL Database as a Service offering, and this real-world experience has made SQL Server 2016 an incredibly robust and battle-hardened data platform.”
But it is the ability to run on Linux that the company sees as one of its most exciting developments. This will enable SQL Server to deliver a consistent data platform across Windows Server and Linux, as well as on-premises and cloud. “We are bringing the core relational database capabilities to preview today, and are targeting availability in mid-2017,” the company says.
SQL Server on Linux will provide customers with even more flexibility in their data solution. One with mission-critical performance, industry-leading TCO, best-in-class security, and hybrid cloud innovations – like Stretch Database which lets customers access their data on-premises and in the cloud whenever they want at low cost – all built in.
“This is an enormously important decision for Microsoft, allowing it to offer its well-known and trusted database to an expanded set of customers”, says Al Gillen, group vice-president, enterprise infrastructure, at IDC. “By taking this key product to Linux Microsoft is proving its commitment to being a cross platform solution provider. This gives customers choice and reduces the concerns for lock-in. We would expect this will also accelerate the overall adoption of SQL Server.”
“SQL Server’s proven enterprise experience and capabilities offer a valuable asset to enterprise Linux customers around the world,” says Paul Cormier, President, Products and Technologies, Red Hat. “We believe our customers will welcome this news and are happy to see Microsoft further increasing its investment in Linux. As we build upon our deep hybrid cloud partnership, spanning not only Linux, but also middleware, and PaaS, we’re excited to now extend that collaboration to SQL Server on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, bringing enterprise customers increased database choice.”
“We are delighted to be working with Microsoft as it brings SQL Server to Linux,” says Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical. “Customers are already taking advantage of Azure Data Lake services on Ubuntu, and now developers will be able to build modern applications that utilize SQL Server’s enterprise capabilities.”
