I recently attended SQLCon and FabCon Europe in Barcelona, and as you would expect, there was a LOT of talk about Fabric, Azure, AI, agents, Copilot, and where the Microsoft data platform is headed next. But one thing from the keynote really stood out to me:
SQL Server is not standing still.
With all the excitement around newer technologies, it can sometimes feel like our good old friend SQL Server isn’t getting the attention it used to. We’ve all complained about it, in recent years, as the magic word seemed to constantly be “FABRIC”. That was definitely not the message I walked away with in Barcelona. In fact, one statement from the announcements immediately caught my attention:
“The center of gravity for most SQL estates is still on-premises or in a VM, and the path forward has to start there.”
As a consultant, this is exactly what I still see in the real world. Yes, cloud adoption is happening. Fabric is happening. AI is definitely happening, much to my chagrin. But there are still a LOT of SQL Server workloads running on-premises and in virtual machines. Those databases aren’t disappearing tomorrow. Microsoft seems to recognize that reality, and several of the announcements at SQLCon reflected it.
For example, SQL Server on Azure Local is now generally available in both connected and disconnected modes. The disconnected option is especially interesting for organizations. If you are a company with air-gapped, sovereign, or intermittently connected environments that still want Azure style management capabilities this is a feature you want to look into.
And here’s a smaller announcement that probably won’t get nearly as much attention, but DBAs deploying SQL Server on Azure VMs may appreciate it.
You can now configure ephemeral storage during provisioning on v6+ Azure VMs. Why do I care? TempDB! If you’ve ever deployed SQL Server VMs in Azure and then had to rearrange things afterward to get TempDB where you actually wanted it, you understand why little improvements like this matter. It’s not the kind of announcement that gets a flashy keynote demo. But making it easier to configure SQL Server correctly from the beginning is something I will always support. No more post deployment scripts. Yay!
My Biggest Takeaway
The biggest takeaway for me wasn’t really any one feature. It was that Microsoft continues to acknowledge something many of us see every day.
SQL Server is running on-premises. It’s running in VMs. It’s running in Azure. And increasingly, all of those environments need to work together. There’s plenty changing around SQL Server, and there were several announcements in Barcelona that I think deserve more attention from DBAs.
So rather than cram all of them into one giant post, I’m going to break them apart and dig into a few of my favorites.
Next up:
Could automatic index compaction actually change how we think about index maintenance?
The post SQL Server Is Still Here and Microsoft Is Still Investing in It first appeared on A Shot of SQLEspresso.