Keeping track of updates for Microsoft SQL Server can be a time consuming task. A business/enterprise using Microsoft SQL Server will typically use more than one version of the product and each of them has its own somewhat random schedule of service packs, cumulative updates and hotfixes. To add to all this we have all those ‘fun’ moments when Microsoft will release some update that will cause serious problems with existing software so now we have to know about that aspect of it as well.

So what is a SQL Server dba supposed to do? Where do we go to find all this information in reasonable time?

For quite a while now the resource that was best known for this type of data was the site below:

http://sqlserverbuilds.blogspot.com/

It’s a great site but it has some issues. For example, we don’t know who’s behind it and for how long they might keep maintaining it. There is also no good way to be alerted of changes so now we’d need to use third-party page monitoring services for that (such as http://www.changedetection.com/ or http://watchthatpage.com/).

Other similar pages exist elsewhere on the web – here are two maintained by the SQL Sentry team for the latest versions of SQL Server:

http://blogs.sqlsentry.com/team-posts/latest-builds-sql-server-2012/ – for SQL Server 2012

http://blogs.sqlsentry.com/team-posts/latest-builds-sql-server-2014/ – for SQL Server 2014

Even Microsoft apparently has such a page but it’s somewhat hidden in its vast network of tech sites:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/ff803383.aspx – Update Center for Microsoft SQL Server

In May 2015 a newcomer site joined the party – this one is updated and maintained by the awesome folks at Brent Ozar Unlimited:

http://sqlserverupdates.com/

So far this last one seems to be the most useful one – it adds information about support end dates and it also allows one to monitor it for changes via email or RSS – very nice.

There you have it – a few ways to keep on top of Microsoft SQL Server updates and remove some of the pain from that process.