SQL Server 2012 Mainstream Support Ended

That went quick and without much fuss.
 
Mainstream support has now ended for SQL Server 2012.
 
In an unusual turn of events Microsoft has advised that the final SP4 is expected to be released in September.
 
Currently, any new installs of SQL Server should be 2016 to which allows non-Enterprise editions to take advantage of some Enterprise features which were introduced in SP1. Software Assurance is also a growing ‘must have’ to allow for DR, use of ever increasing new SQL releases etc.
 
SQL Server 2017 is due for release, but unless you want the pain of bugs for several months, it will likely not be worth considering until later next year when it should be more stable.

SQL Server Diagnostics intro

The newly released SQL Server Diagnostics (Preview) can be found here.
image1
Below are the install screenshots
image2image3image4image5image6
Once installed it is accessible via SSMS
image7
Dumps are usually located in your …MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\Log folder.
Here I also selected to send an email just to see what it’ll look like.
image8
progressimage9
The email received was
image9_1
The other Diagnostics options were
image10
Looks a bit of a cover all at the moment
image11
image12
Takes you to the below site (which no longer exists)
image13

Default Trace Deprecated

It’ll be sad to see the default trace go. It’s help me out numerous times during onsite consults when monitoring has not been in place. It really is one of the good features introduced in SQL Server 2005.
 
image1
The deprecated features list is a bit of an unknown as there is no fixed version/date set by Microsoft, so when it’ll finally goes is anyone’s guess. Hopefully by that stage extended events will be more palatable.