SQL Server versions, at a glance

Two releases still in mainstream support, two more in extended support, ten retired — and one tool, SSMS, that has managed every single one of them since 1995.

Still getting updates

Full release history

Build/CU numbers for 2012 onward from sqlserverbuilds.blogspot.com, updated within days of each release. End-of-support dates from Microsoft's own Lifecycle pages — not published for 2008 R2 and earlier, long past any support window. Both move faster than this snapshot — check them directly for anything you're about to act on.

Retired doesn't have to mean unpatched: Azure Arc

2016 joined 2012 and 2014 on the retired list on 14 July 2026 — no more free security fixes from Microsoft, full stop, for an instance running standalone. That's not actually where most 2012/2014/2016 instances end up, though. Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server is a lightweight agent you install on the box — on-prem, in a VM, in another cloud, doesn't matter — that registers the instance with Azure without moving or touching the data. Once it's Arc-connected, Microsoft will sell (and for Software Assurance customers, sometimes include) Extended Security Updates for that retired version — the same critical and security fixes a supported version still gets — for up to three more years past its official end-of-support date, delivered the same way normal CUs always were.

It also buys more than patches: Arc surfaces the instance in the Azure portal alongside everything else, extends Defender for Cloud's vulnerability assessment to it, and gives you a single inventory of every SQL Server instance you run — 2012 through 2025 — regardless of where it physically lives. For a 2012 or 2014 box that can't be migrated on anyone's realistic timeline, that's the difference between "unsupported and exposed" and "unsupported and still getting fixed."

Why any of this matters

SELECT @@VERSION tells you the build, not the story. A build number maps to a specific set of fixes — and specific, sometimes serious, bugs that were fixed after it. Knowing where an instance sits on this timeline — current, extended, or retired, and whether Extended Security Updates are even an option for it — is the first question before diagnosing anything else on it: half of "this is slower than it used to be" turns out to be a missing CU, not a missing index.