With SQL Server 2012 RTM GA on April 2012 some of you might have already started planning to migrate your database environments to 2012.

Migrating to SQL Server 2012 is a great idea from various angles and a right budget will ease your efforts too(Keeping in mind the increase in licensing costs for 2012)

Migration is one of key activities which will be triggered soon after any product launch,and one of the key information which you should be aware as a DBA or as a decision maker is to understand when the mainstream support is going to be over for the existing versions of SQL Server.

You should know the dates,and the most important part of knowing this information is that it will enable you to take the right decisions.

When is the mainstream support for SQL Server 2005 SP4 is going to be over? What is extend support phase?

You can get all these information right under your finger tips by reading the below post from CSS Engineers post

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/psssql/archive/2010/02/17/mainstream-vs-extended-support-and-sql-server-2005-sp4-can-someone-explain-all-of-this.aspx

Microsoft has provided a great portal where you can get information on product life cycle

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/search/

Conclusion

Know the exact dates which will help you to drive forward with correct decisions.

Thanks for reading.