Small business running SQL Server 2016 on EverRun (EOL July 13, 2026). Need to upgrade software ASAP. Planning a hardware upgrade later. Looking for advice on the best path forward.
Posted by Desperate_Struggle18@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 8 comments
**TL;DR: Small business running SQL Server 2016 on EverRun (EOL July 13, 2026). Need to upgrade software ASAP. Planning a hardware upgrade later. Looking for advice on the best path forward.**
---
Hey everyone, looking for some community input on our infrastructure upgrade path. We're a small wholesale fragrance distributor in Miami (\~20 users).
**Current Setup:**
- HPE ProLiant ML350 G9 (purchased 2017, \~$62K total investment with EverRun)
- Stratus EverRun 7.9.3 (fault-tolerant virtualization)
- 2× Xeon E5-2650 v4 (24 cores total, but EverRun only presents 21 vCPUs)
- 44 GB RAM (running at 73% utilization)
- 6× 300GB HDD in RAID 5 + 1× 800GB SSD
- Windows Server 2016 Standard (Volume MAK)
- SQL Server 2016 Standard (Server+CAL)
- Applications: Macola/Synergy ERP, KnowledgeSync, SSRS, IIS
**The Problem:**
- SQL Server 2016 reaches end-of-life on July 13, 2026 (less than 2 months away)
- No more security patches after that date
- Compliance/insurance risk if we don't upgrade
- System has been experiencing service crashes every 2-3 weeks
- EverRun eats 12-15% of CPU overhead and costs $2,400/yr in support
**Our Plan (2 Phases):**
*Phase 1 (NOW — $8,919):*
- Buy Windows Server 2025 + SQL Server 2025 licenses with 20 CALs each
- Use Microsoft downgrade rights to install 2022 versions (EverRun 7.9.3 only supports up to Windows Server 2022)
- In-place upgrade on existing hardware
- Keep EverRun for redundancy
- This is within our approved $17K budget
*Phase 2 (LATER — TBD budget):*
- New HPE ML350 Gen12 servers (2-node Windows Failover Cluster)
- Drop EverRun entirely
- Upgrade to 2025 versions using same licenses (no additional cost)
- NVMe or SSD storage
- HPE iQuote is showing \~$134K for a full 2-node cluster with HPE-branded SSDs which seems very high
**My Questions for the Community:**
-
**In-place upgrade vs clean install?** For going from Windows Server 2016 → 2022 and SQL Server 2016 → 2022 on EverRun, should I do an in-place upgrade or build a new VM and migrate? Any gotchas with EverRun?
-
**SQL Server 2022 vs 2025?** We're buying 2025 licenses for downgrade rights, but installing 2022 for now. Anyone running SQL Server 2022 on EverRun 7.9.3 successfully?
-
**HPE pricing reality check.** HPE iQuote shows 960GB NVMe drives at \~$15K EACH. Is this normal? The full 2-node cluster quotes at $134K. For a 20-user Macola/Synergy ERP environment, is this overkill? What would you recommend for Phase 2 hardware?
-
**EverRun vs Windows Failover Cluster.** Anyone migrated from EverRun to WSFC? How was the experience? Is the failover as seamless? We're currently getting crashes every 2-3 weeks and wondering if EverRun is part of the problem.
-
**Third-party drives in HPE servers.** HPE says using non-HPE drives can void the warranty. Has anyone actually had warranty claims denied for using Samsung/Intel enterprise NVMe drives in ProLiant servers?
-
**Cloud vs on-premise for ERP?** We looked at Azure (\~$22K/yr for HA) but our ERP (Macola/Synergy) is designed for on-premise. Anyone successfully moved Macola to cloud? Was it worth it?
-
**Licensing sanity check.** For a 2-node failover cluster: 2× Windows Server licenses but only 1× SQL Server license (passive node is free). 1 set of CALs covers both nodes. Is this correct?
Any advice, war stories, or suggestions are welcome. Thanks!
---
**Environment:** HPE ML350 G9 / EverRun 7.9.3 / SQL 2016 / Macola ERP / 20 users / Miami
Mindless_Fisherman68@reddit
your phase-1 plan is fine on paper but I'd push back on a few things.
EverRun for 20 users at $2,400/yr support plus 12-15% CPU overhead is paying enterprise insurance on a small-business workload. real question is what your tolerated downtime is. if you can survive a 1-2 hour outage with good backups and a documented restore runbook, you don't need fault-tolerance hardware, you need a solid Veeam or Altaro setup writing to a NAS plus offsite. that frees you from EverRun's version-lock entirely and lets you go straight to 2025.
SQL 2016 actually has Extended Security Updates available through 2026-2029 via Azure Arc enrollment, which buys you headroom if Phase 2 hardware slips. ESU is cheap compared to a rushed migration. worth pricing as a contingency, not the plan.
ML350 Gen12 at $134K for 20 users is hyperscaler pricing. for that workload you want a single Dell R660 or HPE DL360 Gen11 with NVMe at $15-25K plus an identical box for cluster or DR, under $50K instead of $134K. HPE-branded drives are 3-5x the price of equivalent enterprise SSDs from Samsung/Micron with the same warranty when bought from a reseller. iQuote is loaded with margin you don't need.
crashes every 2-3 weeks on 2017 HPE with HDDs in RAID 5 plus EverRun overhead is the real current problem, not 2026 EOL. pull iLO logs and Event Viewer system+application around crash windows. if it correlates with EverRun replication events, EverRun is the failure mode. if it's memory pressure or disk queue spikes, storage is undersized.
run the EverRun vs Veeam-plus-backup math first, that decision reshapes phase 2.
qkdsm7@reddit
All great points. #2 and #4 were the first things that came to mind.
GallowWho@reddit
134k budget, this small business is doing well
cirquefan@reddit
A note for anyone thinking about SQL Server & SQL Express ... the size limitation for SQL Express is now 50 gigabytes, up from 10. That's quite a jump!
FlickKnocker@reddit
No idea what EverRun is, never heard of it.
Make sure backups are successful. I'd do another full backup in SQL Management Studio.
I'd personally pick a fully-dark maintenance weekend and scale down resources on the current production environment to give you enough room to restore to your new VM running SQL 2022.
You should be able to power down old production VM, re-assign resources to new VM, power it up, test it thoroughly (also keep in mind that the connection string will have a new hostname to contend with on each of the workstations; not sure how that's handled, but I'd have a ticket open with your ERP vendor already).
MortadellaKing@reddit
Get some refurbished off lease hardware with warranty. You will save tens of thousands.
Cormacolinde@reddit
I would Send everything to the cloud.
Talk to your ERP integrator first, do a PoC and test it.
GallowWho@reddit
It doesn't matter how you do it, just make sure you have a recent backup of your database.