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SQL Server 2025 is generally available: what to check before you upgrade

SQL Server 2025 reached general availability at Microsoft Ignite. The edition changes, the removed features and the breaking changes that should shape your upgrade plan.

Brian Bønk5 min read
SQL ServerSQL Server 2025UpgradeLicensing

SQL Server 2025 is generally available as of today, announced at Microsoft Ignite. The feature list has been public since the preview, so the real news for most teams is not what is new. It is that the clock for upgrade decisions has started, and some of the edition changes will affect your licensing plan before any T-SQL does.

Microsoft lists support for SQL Server 2025 starting 18 November 2025, with mainstream support ending in January 2031 and extended support in January 2036. That gives you a long runway, but only if you start with the right edition and a clean upgrade path.

The edition changes that matter

Standard edition gets more room. A single instance can now use the lesser of 4 sockets or 32 cores, up from 24 cores in SQL Server 2022. The buffer pool limit per instance is now 256 GB.

Resource governor is also available in Standard edition, with the same functionality as in Enterprise. If you have been consolidating several workloads on one Standard instance and hoping they behave, this is a real tool, not a workaround.

Some things stay Enterprise only. Full Always On availability groups, online index rebuilds and several intelligent query processing features such as batch mode on rowstore are still not in Standard. Check the edition feature list against what you actually use before assuming 32 cores means "Enterprise light".

Web edition is gone, Express grows up

Web edition is discontinued. There is no SQL Server 2025 Web edition. The supported upgrade paths take a Web edition instance to Standard or Enterprise, so if you run Web edition today, the upgrade is also a licensing conversation.

Express edition changes in two ways:

  • The maximum relational database size is now 50 GB.
  • Express with Advanced Services is discontinued, because Express now includes all the features that used to be in that package.

The other limits on Express stay tight: the lesser of 1 socket or 4 cores, and 1,410 MB of buffer pool. A bigger database file does not make it a server edition.

Two developer editions

The old Developer edition is now split. Enterprise Developer edition matches Enterprise, as Developer did before. The new Standard Developer edition includes the features of Standard and is free for development and test.

This is more useful than it sounds. If production runs Standard, you can finally test in an environment that has the same limits. Microsoft even suggests using it as a staging environment to certify an upgrade from Standard to SQL Server 2025 Standard.

What is removed, and what breaks

Before you plan an in-place upgrade, read the discontinued list:

  • Data Quality Services and Master Data Services are removed.
  • Synapse Link is discontinued. Microsoft points to Mirroring in Fabric instead.
  • Purview access policies are discontinued, with fixed server roles as the replacement.
  • There is no new version of SQL Server Reporting Services. On-premises reporting moves to Power BI Report Server, which any customer with a paid SQL Server license gets access to.

A known issue makes the DQS point practical. If Data Quality Services is installed, the upgrade fails at the Feature Rules step unless you run setup with the /IACCEPTDQUNINSTALL parameter.

The breaking changes are mostly about encryption. SQL Server 2025 uses Microsoft OLE DB Driver 19 with stricter defaults, so existing linked server configurations can fail after upgrade unless a valid certificate is in place. Replication with a remote distributor and remote log shipping monitoring can break for the same reason. The fix Microsoft recommends is a trusted certificate, not switching the checks off.

Two more known issues are worth a look. Installation fails if TLS 1.2 is disabled on the machine. And SQL authentication now hashes passwords with PBKDF2 by default, which means slightly longer login time and more CPU, most noticeable for applications without connection pooling.

What to do next

Supported in-place upgrades come from SQL Server 2014 SP3, 2016 SP3, 2017, 2019 and 2022. On Windows Server, you need 2019 or later. A practical order of work:

  1. Inventory editions. List every Web and Express with Advanced Services instance, and decide where each one lands.
  2. Check for DQS, MDS, Synapse Link, Purview access policies and SSRS. Each one needs a plan before setup runs.
  3. Find every linked server, remote distributor and log shipping monitor. Get proper certificates on those instances first.
  4. Confirm TLS 1.2 is enabled and the host OS is supported.
  5. Stand up a Standard Developer or Enterprise Developer instance that matches production and run your workload there.
  6. Revisit Standard edition sizing. The new 32 core and 256 GB limits might let you avoid an Enterprise license you only needed for scale.

Step six is where the money is. After two decades in data, I have seen many estates pay for Enterprise because Standard ran out of memory, not features. It is worth recalculating.

Takeaway

SQL Server 2025 GA is a good moment to plan, not to rush. The edition changes reward teams on Standard and push Web edition users into a decision. The removed features and new encryption defaults are where an upgrade weekend goes wrong.

Which of your instances would hit one of these changes first: a Web edition box, a linked server, or a forgotten DQS install?

Sources

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