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Don’t Forget to Finish the Upgrade…
I have been working on a few upgrades both in-house and for outside folks and have seen a surprising and humbling coincidence.
It seems that both the clients and some internal projects have gone through the process of upgrading from prior releases of SQL Server to SQL Server 2005/8. Great! The surprise comes from looking back on the upgrade. It seems that the databases ended up in compatibility mode to make things more straightforward. This, combined with some legacy accounts and access controls made the upgrade process smoother. It also left some holes in the upgrade process and ultimately in the security.
The point of all of this is to make sure you finish the job. Go back, check your upgrades, remove temporary accounts, update security, update your compatibility levels and otherwise remove the bridge work that so typically comes from the upgrade process. Of course don’t just yank these things out without testing and making sure things aren’t still relying on them, but you should review, see what’s left to be done and then get a plan in place to finish it. Don’t leave it hanging.
Several issues around just leaving things – if your database is in compatibility mode, you may have issues going forward for future updates. You can’t really expect Microsoft to carry forward those comp ability modes forever.
Performance may suffer – features are disabled, less-then-optimal storage is in use, etc. This can be a byproduct of the compatibility mode.
Security can be impaired – old accounts, access with too much access, too many accounts. It can all add up.
There’s no time like the present to take a look around and see what still needs to be done.
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