Announcing SQLCon 2026: Better Together with FabCon!
We’re thrilled to unveil SQLCon 2026, the premier Microsoft SQL Community Conference, co-located with the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference (FabCon) from March 16–20, 2026! This year, we’re bringing the best of both worlds under one roof—uniting the vibrant SQL and Fabric communities for a truly next-level experience. Whether you’re passionate about SQL Server, Azure SQL, SQL in Fabric, SQL Tools, migration and modernization, database security, or building AI-powered apps with SQL, SQLCon 2026 has you covered. Dive into 50+ breakout sessions and 4 expert-led workshops designed to help you optimize, innovate, and connect. Why are SQLCon + FabCon better together? One registration, double the value: Register for either conference and get full access to both—mix and match sessions, keynotes, and community events to fit your interests. Shared spaces, shared energy: Enjoy the same expo hall, registration desk, conference app, and community lounge. Network with peers across the data platform spectrum. Unforgettable experiences: Join us for both keynotes at the State Farm Arena and celebrate at the legendary attendee party at the Georgia Aquarium. Our goal is to reignite the SQL Community spirit—restoring the robust networks, friendships, and career-building opportunities that make this ecosystem so special. SQLCon is just the beginning of a renewed commitment to connect at conferences, user groups, online, and at regional events. Early Access Pricing Extended! Register by November 14th and save $200 with code SQLCMTY200. Register Now! Want to share your expertise? The Call for Content is open until November 20th for both conferences! Let’s build the future of data—together. See you at SQLCon + FabCon!SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 21 is now generally available (GA)
The SQL Tools team is thrilled to announce the general availability of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 21. SSMS 21 GA brings a modern installation and update experience through the Visual Studio installer, 64-bit support, Git integration, and initial dark theme support.
SQL Server 2025: introducing tempdb space resource governance
An old problem Since the early days of SQL Server, DBAs had to contend with a common problem – running out of space in the tempdb database. It has always struck me as odd that all I need to cause an outage on an SQL Server instance is access to the server where I can create a temp table that fills up tempdb, and there is no permission to stop me. - Erland Sommarskog (website), an independent SQL Server consultant and a Data Platform MVP Because tempdb is used for a multitude of purposes, the problem can occur without any explicit user action such as creating a temporary table. For example, executing a reporting query that spills data to tempdb and fills it up can cause an outage for all workloads using that SQL Server instance. Over the years, many DBAs developed custom solutions that monitor tempdb space and take action, for example kill sessions that consume a large amount of tempdb space. But that comes with extra effort and complexity. I have spent more hours in my career than I can count building solutions to manage TempDB space. Even with immense time and effort, there were still quirks and caveats that came up that created challenges - especially in multi-tenant environments with lots of databases and the noisy-neighbor problem. - Edward Pollack (LinkedIn), Data Architect at Transfinder and a Data Platform MVP A new solution in the SQL Server engine SQL Server 2025 brings a new solution for this old problem, built directly into the database engine. Starting with the CTP 2.0 release, you can use resource governor, a feature available since SQL Server 2008, to enforce limits on tempdb space consumption. We rely on Resource Governor to isolate workloads on our SQL Server instances by controlling CPU and memory usage. It helps us ensure that the core of our trading systems remains stable and runs with predictable performance, even when other parts of the systems share the same servers. - Ola Hallengren (website), Chief Data Platforms Engineer at Saxo Bank and a Data Platform MVP Similarly, if you have multiple workloads running on your server, each workload can have its own tempdb limit, lower than the maximum available tempdb space. This way, even if one workload hits its limit, other workloads continue running. Here's an example that limits the total tempdb space consumption by queries in the default workload group to 17 GB, using just two T-SQL statements: ALTER WORKLOAD GROUP [default] WITH (GROUP_MAX_TEMPDB_DATA_MB = 17408); ALTER RESOURCE GOVERNOR RECONFIGURE; The default group is used for all queries that aren’t classified into another workload group. You can create workload groups for specific applications, users, etc. and set limits for each group. When a query attempts to increase tempdb space consumption beyond the workload group limit, it is aborted with error 1138, severity 17, Could not allocate a new page for database 'tempdb' because that would exceed the limit set for workload group 'workload-group-name'. All other queries on the server continue to execute. Setting the limits You might be asking, “How do I know the right limits for the different workloads on my servers?” No need to guess. Tempdb space usage is tracked for each workload group at all times and reported in the sys.dm_resource_governor_workload_groups DMV. Usage is tracked even if no limits are set for the workload groups. You can establish representative usage patterns for each workload over time, then set the right limits. You can reconfigure the limits over time if workload patterns change. For example, the following query lets you see the current tempdb space usage, peak usage, and the number of times queries were aborted because they would otherwise exceed the limit per workload group: SELECT group_id, name, tempdb_data_space_kb, peak_tempdb_data_space_kb, total_tempdb_data_limit_violation_count FROM sys.dm_resource_governor_workload_groups; Peak usage and the number of query aborts (limit violations) are tracked since server restart. You can reset these and other resource governor statistics to restart tracking at any time and without restarting the server by executing ALTER RESOURCE GOVERNOR RESET STATISTICS; What about the transaction log? The limits you set for each workload group apply to space in the tempdb data files. But what about the tempdb transaction log? Couldn’t a large transaction fill up the log and cause an outage? This is where another feature in SQL Server 2025 comes in. You can now enable accelerated database recovery (ADR) in tempdb to get the benefit of aggressive log truncation, and drastically reduce the possibility of running out of log space in tempdb. For more information, see ADR improvements in SQL Server 2025. Learn more For more information about tempdb space resource governance, including examples, best practices, and the details of how it works, see Tempdb space resource governance in documentation. If you haven’t used resource governor in SQL Server before, here’s a good starting point: Tutorial: Resource governor configuration examples and best practices. Conclusion SQL Server 2025 brings a new, built-in solution for the age-old problem of tempdb space management. You can now use resource governor to set limits on tempdb usage and avoid server-wide outages because tempdb ran out of space. We are looking forward to your feedback on this and other SQL Server features during the public preview of SQL Server 2025 and beyond. You can leave comments on this blog post, email us at sql-rg-feedback@microsoft.com, or leave feedback at https://aka.ms/sqlfeedback.SQL Server 2025 is Now Generally Available
Today at Ignite, we announce the general availability of SQL Server 2025. This marks the latest milestone in the more than 30-year history of SQL Server. It is also a key part of our commitment to the one consistent SQL promise, delivering consistent experience across on-premises, cloud, and SaaS environments, with one engine and one unified platform. Built on SQL Server’s foundation of best-in-class security, performance and availability, SQL Server 2025 is the AI-ready enterprise database and it redefines what's possible for enterprise data. With built-in AI and developer-first enhancements, SQL Server 2025 empowers customers to accelerate AI innovation using the data they already have, securely and at scale, all within SQL Server using the familiar T-SQL language. SQL Server 2025 is designed to meet customers where they are, whether on-premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid environments, helping you build intelligent, secure, scalable, and consistent solutions that drive real business outcomes. SQL Server 2025 is experiencing significant momentum, as evidenced by 10,000 organizations participating in the public preview and 100,000 active SQL Server 2025 databases. Leading customers like Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), Infios, and Buhler are already advancing with SQL Server 2025, supported by a robust ecosystem of technology partners including AMD, Canonical, HPE, Lenovo, NVIDIA, Pure Storage and Red Hat. Key Innovations in SQL Server 2025 AI built-in AI is now integrated directly into the SQL Server engine, enabling advanced semantic search for deeper insights and natural language experiences across enterprise data. Model management is built into T-SQL, supporting seamless integration with Microsoft Foundry, Azure OpenAI Service, OpenAI, Ollama, and more—deployable securely anywhere, from on premises to the cloud. Developers can easily switch between models without changing code, and essential AI building blocks like vector embedding, text chunking, and DiskANN indexing are natively supported. Integration with frameworks such as LangChain and Semantic Kernel accelerates AI-powered app development. At Ivanti, our mission is to elevate human potential by managing, protecting, and automating technology to drive continuous innovation. SQL Server 2025 plays a crucial role in helping us achieve this goal. By harnessing the advanced capabilities of SQL Server 2025 and Azure OpenAI, we are building intelligent, agentic tools that empower customers to access knowledge and resolve incidents faster. Sirjad Parakkat, Vice President, AI Engineering | Ivanti Made for developers This release is the most significant for SQL developers in a decade, streamlining development and boosting productivity. Native JSON support, REST APIs,RegEx and Fuzzy string match enable richer data enrichment and validation. Change event streaming allows real-time, event-driven applications by streaming changes directly from transaction to Azure Event Hubs, reducing resource overhead compared to CDC. SQL Tooling SQL Server 2025 delivers major updates across the data platform. SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS 22) is now generally available, offering official support for SQL Server 2025, enhanced AI assistance, and ARM64 support. SSMS 22 also includes AI assistance when you install the GitHub Copilot workload, which leverages the same GitHub subscription you use with GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio or VS Code. The Microsoft Python Driver for SQL Server (mssql-python) is generally available, providing a modern, high-performance connector with Entra ID authentication. "SQL Server 2025 offers two major functionalities which are very important to us and will bring SQL Server into the future – native API calls and RAG. In the past we’ve had to use custom assemblies for making API calls, which can be a huge problem when you have to make hundreds of thousands of API calls and the remote systems are slow to respond, creating large queues and high CPU load in SQL. With RAG and vector search, we can now implement countless AI possibilities, making data searchable in ways previously impossible.” Alex Ivanov, CTO, eDynamix Best-in-class security, performance, and availability SQL Server 2025 builds on its foundation as the most secure database in the last decade, introducing modern identity and encryption practices, including Microsoft Entra managed identities for improved credential management. Optimized locking reduces lock memory consumption, minimizes blocking, and boosts concurrency. Tempdb space resource governance improves server reliability. Optional parameter plan optimization makes query performance more stable. SQL Server 2025 continues to strengthen its mission-critical capabilities with enhancements to Always On availability groups (AGs) and disaster recovery options. The focus is on faster failover, improved diagnostics, and hybrid flexibility. Preliminary benchmarks show SQL Server 2025 running on AMD EPYC processors with HPE hardware delivers measurable gains in performance and value. For performance, the 10TB workload sets a new record for SQL Server. In price-performance, SQL Server 2025 achieves a 4% improvement in the 3TB category compared to previous results. “At Infios, we are very excited about several new features in SQL Server 2025 and the vast amount of opportunities for performance improvements. We are most excited about the optimized locking feature and how that can drastically help reduce locking across our customers and all their unique workloads. Optional Parameter Plan Optimization (OPPO) could also be huge for us with SQL Server being able to reduce parameter sniffing issues. Persisted statistics on secondary replicas will also be beneficial for the rare occurrence that we have a failover event. While we’ve been pleased with all the improvements to tempdb in previous versions, resource governance to prevent runaway queries and consuming large amounts of disk space in SQL 2025 is a big improvement for us. ” Tim Radney, SaaS Operations Manager, Infios Cloud agility through Azure and Fabric SQL Server 2025 enhances cloud agility with support for database mirroring in Fabric, enabling near real-time analytics with zero-ETL and offloading analytical workloads. Azure Arc integration continues to provide unified management, security, and governance for SQL estates across on-premises and cloud environments, empowering organizations to scale and modernize with confidence. “With Fabric Mirroring in SQL Server 2025, ExponentHR can effortlessly mirror numerous datasets to fabric, enabling near real-time analytics. This technology has alleviated the need for expensive and complex ETL operations and enables more productivity for our customers. Thanks to SQL Server 2025’s built-in cloud connectivity, we can directly process large amounts of data efficiently and overcome traditional bottlenecks.” -- Brent Carlson, IT Manager, ExponentHR SQL Server 2025 on Linux SQL Server 2025 on Linux introduces several important enhancements. Security is strengthened with TLS 1.3 support, custom password policies, and signed container images. Platform support expands to include RHEL 10 and Ubuntu 24.04, while performance is improved through tmpfs support for tempdb and container-based deployments. Advanced analytics are enabled with generic ODBC data source support via PolyBase. Developer experience is streamlined with Visual Studio Code integration for local container deployment using the mssql extension and validated deployment patterns in partnership with Red Hat, supporting modern workloads and AI scenarios across hybrid environments. "The work we’re doing with Microsoft to optimize SQL Server on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a powerful testament to the strength of our collaboration. With the new features in SQL Server, including support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 and enabling streamlined deployment via Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, we are making it easier than ever for customers to deploy and manage this critical workload across the hybrid cloud. This collaboration extends beyond just enabling core performance to deliver innovative, validated patterns, such as leveraging Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI with SQL Server for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and generative AI scenarios, and providing a more consistent experience for customers, whether they are deploying via the Azure Marketplace or on-premises. Our mutual goal is to minimize complexity, increase confidence and help enterprises harness the full potential of their data and AI investments on a trusted, open foundation." - Gunner Hellekson, Vice President and General Manager, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat SQL Server 2025 on Azure Virtual Machines Run SQL Server 2025—any edition, Standard, Enterprise, Enterprise Developer, or the new Standard Developer Edition—on Azure Virtual Machines, using optimized VM families like Mbdsv3, Ebdsv5/6, and FXmdsv2 for high performance. Pair with Premium SSD v2 or Ultra Disk storage to achieve fast throughput, low latency, and excellent scalability. Deploy quickly from the Azure portal with features including configurable settings, flexible licensing, storage setup for data, logs, and tempdb, automated patching, and Best Practice Assessment (BPA). Get started today to leverage SQL Server 2025 and Azure’s high performance and flexibility. Preview Features & Flexibility In SQL Server 2025, customers can explore new database features using an opt-in mechanism through database-scoped configurations. Certain features, such as vector indexes, are introduced this way, allowing customers to try them in preview even while SQL Server is generally available. These features will become fully available in a future SQL Server 2025 update, at which point the database-scoped configuration will no longer be required. Our goal is to make preview features generally available within approximately 12 months, guided by customer feedback and our commitment to delivering high-quality experiences. Learn more. Product Changes SQL Server 2025 brings important changes to the product lineup. Standard edition changes: Resource limits have increased to support up to 32 cores and 256 GB of memory. Resource governor is now available in Standard edition. The newly launched Standard Developer edition offers full feature parity with the Standard edition, enabling development and testing that mirrors production environment capabilities. Power BI Report Server entitlement is now included for all editions except the Express edition, adding value for customers. Express edition changes: The maximum database size is now increased to 50 GB per database. The Express Advanced mode has been consolidated into a single, unified SQL Express edition, featuring all feature capabilities that were available in Express Advanced. Discontinuing Web edition in SQL Server 2025 release: SQL Server 2022 is the final version of the Web edition, with SQL Server 2022 Web edition remaining supported until January 2033 in line with Microsoft’s fixed lifecycle policy. If you've been using the Web edition for cost-effective web applications, now is a great time to consider migrating to Azure SQL. Azure SQL offers an affordable, scalable solution that is well-suited for modern web workloads. For multi-tenant apps, Azure SQL Database elastic pools provide flexible pricing and easy management—making the move to Azure SQL a smart choice for future growth. If you remain on-premises or use Azure SQL Virtual Machines, upgrade to the Standard edition. Modern Reporting and Analytics On-premises SQL Server Reporting Service (SSRS) consolidated into Power BI Report Server is now the default reporting solution, unifying paginated and interactive reports for all paid SQL Server licenses. Learn more. SQL Server Analysis Services 2025 introduces major performance enhancements, including improved MDX query efficiency, parallel DirectQuery execution, and visual DAX calculations for simplified modeling. It also adds new DAX functions, client library updates, and deprecates PowerPivot for SharePoint, while discontinuing HTTP access via msmdpump.dll by default. Learn more. SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) now introduces support for the Microsoft SqlClient Data Provider in ADO.NET connection manager, enhancing connectivity and modernizing data integration workflows. Learn more. Partner Momentum Partners such as AMD, Intel, and HPE are collaborating on advanced performance and high availability solutions, including benchmark testing on AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon processors, with HPE achieving world record results for performance and price/performance. NVIDIA is working with SQL Server 2025 to enable streamlined deployment of GPU-optimized AI models using built-in REST APIs, supporting flexible AI workloads across environments. Pure Storage is delivering high availability and fast backup solutions through deep integration with SQL Server 2025, including metadata-aware snapshots and automation for simplified operations. Additionally, Microsoft works closely with partners like Canonical and Red Hat to ensure SQL Server is integrated seamlessly and operates effectively within the Linux ecosystem, providing customers with robust and reliable database solutions across a broader range of environments. Get Started Today SQL Server 2025 reaffirms Microsoft’s commitment to innovation, performance, and developer empowerment. We thank our customers, partners, and community for your ongoing support and feedback. We look forward to seeing what you build next with the AI-ready enterprise database. Download SQL Server 2025 today One consistent SQL: the launchpad from legacy to innovation Learn more through documentation and our Mechanics video Master SQL Server 2025 with a full learning path and claim your badge Get started with Azure SQL Share your feedback at SQL CommunityAnnouncing Public Preview of DiskANN in SQL Server 2025
We are excited to announce the public preview of DiskANN in SQL Server 2025, a significant advancement in our AI capabilities. This release comes with full vector support, enabling the storing and querying of embeddings, which are essential for modern AI applications.SQL Server 2025: Deeply Integrated and Feature-rich on Linux
SQL Server continues to power mission-critical workloads across enterprises, and with SQL Server 2025, we’re delivering innovations that redefine performance, security, developer experience, AI innovation and flexibility along with additional features tailored for Linux environments. Momentum on SQL Server for Linux The adoption of SQL Server on Linux has been phenomenal. The public preview of SQL Server 2025 has seen remarkable adoption, with Linux based deployments experiencing substantial growth reflecting strong demand for cross-platform capabilities. Enterprises are embracing Linux for cloud native architectures, containers, and Kubernetes deployments and SQL Server is meeting them where they are, enabling customers to run their modern production workloads seamlessly. We’ve collaborated closely with partners such as Canonical, DH2i, PortWorx, and Red Hat (listed alphabetically) to ensure support for the latest distributions and maintain robust high-availability solutions through clustering stacks provided by our partners What’s new in SQL Server 2025 on Linux Here are the highlights: Security Enhancements TLS 1.3 Support for stronger encryption option for data that is transmitted across a network between the client application and SQL Server instance. For details, refer: Encrypt Connections to SQL Server on Linux - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn Ability to Configure Custom password policies via Active Directory (adutil) or mssql.conf for non-domain setups. This allows you to define parameters like minimum password length similar to Windows domain policies whether or not your SQL Server instance on Linux is domain joined. This upgrade gives SQL Server authentication the flexibility and security that enterprises need. Learn more here: Use Custom Password Policy for SQL Logins on Linux - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn Container Images for SQL Server 2025 are now signed to ensure image integrity. Expanded Platform Support Preview support for RHEL 10 and Ubuntu 24.04, expanding enterprise Linux coverage to include support for latest releases from Red Hat and Canonical. For details refer: Get Started with SQL Server 2025 on RHEL 10- preview and Get started with SQL Server 2025 on Ubuntu 24.04- Preview Starting with SQL Server 2025, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) is not supported. If you are currently using SQL Server 2022 or an earlier version on SLES, you will continue to receive cumulative updates and support as outlined in the SQL Server 2022 Lifecycle policy or the relevant policies for earlier versions, with no changes to your existing experience for existing deployments. To upgrade to SQL Server 2025, back up your databases and restore them to a supported distribution. Performance Optimizations Tmpfs Support for SQL Server on Linux: For SQL Server on Linux running on physical machines, virtual machines, or containers, you can now host tempdb data and log files on the tmpfs filesystem. This enhancement significantly improves performance for workloads prone to tempdb disk spills, delivering faster throughput and efficiency in this scenario. For containers-based SQL deployment, you can also host all data and log files including user and system database on the tmpfs filesystem, delivering ultra-fast I/O for development and testing scenarios. However, note that data stored on tmpfs is ephemeral and will be lost when the container restarts. Therefore, only use this option for databases where data loss after restart is acceptable, such as in development or test environments. Learn more about tmpfs support here: Enable and Run tempdb on tmpfs for SQL Server 2025 on Linux - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn Advanced Analytics Generic ODBC Data Source Support with PolyBase Seamlessly query external data sources from Linux-based SQL Server using bring your own driver (BYOD) similar to SQL Server on Windows. This feature uses an external service to securely isolate and load drivers, ensuring safe usage. For details refer: Use ODBC Data Source with SQL Server on Linux - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn Developer Experience VS Code – SQL Server (mssql) Extension: Deploy SQL Server 2025 local containers directly from Visual Studio Code using the SQL Server (mssql) extension for a streamlined developer workflow. For details refer: SQL Server (mssql) - Visual Studio Marketplace Validated Pattern with Red Hat We’ve partnered with Red Hat to deliver a validated deployment pattern for SQL Server on RHEL Supercharging Financial Insights with RAG-Based Search on Microsoft SQL Server. The validated patterns are an advanced form of reference architecture, offering a streamlined approach to deploying complex business solutions. To learn more about Validated patterns and how it's different from traditional reference architecture please refer: About Validated Patterns | Validated Patterns. Quotes from our partners: "The work we’re doing with Microsoft to optimize SQL Server on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a powerful testament to the strength of our collaboration. With the new features in SQL Server, including support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 and enabling streamlined deployment via Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, we are making it easier than ever for customers to deploy and manage this critical workload across the hybrid cloud. This collaboration extends beyond just enabling core performance to deliver innovative, validated patterns, such as leveraging Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI with SQL Server for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and generative AI scenarios, and providing a more consistent experience for customers, whether they are deploying via the Azure Marketplace or on-premises. Our mutual goal is to minimize complexity, increase confidence and help enterprises harness the full potential of their data and AI investments on a trusted, open foundation." Gunner Hellekson, vice president and general manager, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat "The availability of SQL Server 2025 on Ubuntu 24.04 provides developers and enterprises a robust foundation for building and deploying demanding AI-driven applications." Jehudi Castro-Sierra, Public Cloud Alliance Director, Canonical “As a leading provider of high availability and database management software, we're thrilled about the performance enhancements and features added to SQL Server 2025. New capabilities like Vector Search and AI-powered optimization will allow our customers to drive business success through data-driven decision-making, faster query execution, improved throughput, and reduced downtime. The automated tuning and maintenance capabilities will also significantly improve operational efficiency, and reduce the complexity and cost associated with database management. Our participation in the SQL Server 2025 EAP has allowed us to ensure that we will provide comprehensive high availability support for our customers’ mission-critical database deployments of SQL Server 2025, including native TLS 1.3 support for encrypted communications, ensuring modern, secure, and high-performance connectivity across all environments. Whether our customers are deploying native or containerized instances on Windows or Linux, DH2i software solutions will ensure nearest-to-zero downtime and fully automatic failover. Additionally, we will be ready to provide secure and intelligent HA for the complex, cross-platform data estates that our customers will be building to support their SQL Server 2025-backed AI applications.” -OJ Ngo, Co-Founder & CTO, DH2i Learn More Explore the full list of features: What's New for SQL Server 2025 Preview on Linux - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn Join us at Microsoft Ignite for deep-dive sessions and demos.Reimagining Data Excellence: SQL Server 2025 Accelerated by Pure Storage
SQL Server 2025 is a leap forward as enterprise AI-ready database, unifying analytics, modern AI application development, and mission-critical engine capabilities like security, high availability and performance from ground to cloud. Pure Storage’s all-Flash solutions are engineered to optimize SQL Server workloads, offering faster query performance, reduced latency, and simplified management. Together it helps customers accelerate the modernization of their data estate.SQL Server 2025 Preview RC1: Now Supporting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 10
We’re happy to announce that SQL Server 2025 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) now includes preview support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 10, expanding our commitment to modern, secure, and flexible Linux-based deployments. RHEL 10 Support in SQL Server 2025 RC1 You can now deploy SQL Server 2025 Preview on RHEL10 for your Dev/Test environments using the Enterprise Evaluation Edition, which is valid for 180 days. For your production workloads you could use SQL Server 2022 on RHEL 9 or Ubuntu 22.04. Deploying SQL Server 2025 RC1 on RHEL10 You can follow the Quickstart: Install SQL Server and create a database on RHEL10 to install SQL Server and create a database on RHEL10. It walks you through everything—from preparing your system to installing and configuring SQL Server. To explore the latest improvements in SQL Server 2025 RC1, check out What's New in SQL Server 2025 - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn. I was particularly interested in testing the new Half-precision float support in vector data type. To do this, I deployed SQL Server RHEL10 (the tag is 2025-RC1-rhel-10) container on WSL2 and I already have Docker Desktop installed on my local machine to manage containers. I launched the SQL Server 2025 RC1 container, connected to it using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), and successfully tested the vector data type enhancement. docker pull mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/rhel/server:2025-RC1-rhel-10 docker run -e "ACCEPT_EULA=Y" -e "MSSQL_SA_PASSWORD=passwordshouldbestrong" \ -e "MSSQL_AGENT_ENABLED=true" \ -p 14337:1433 --name sql2025RC1RHEL10 --hostname sql2025RC1RHEL10 \ -d mcr.microsoft.com/mssql/rhel/server:2025-RC1-rhel-10 SELECT @@VERSION GO CREATE DATABASE SQL2025onRHEL10 GO USE SQL2025onRHEL10 GO -- Step 0: Enable Preview Features ALTER DATABASE SCOPED CONFIGURATION SET PREVIEW_FEATURES = ON; GO -- Step 1: Create a Table with a VECTOR(5, float16) Column CREATE TABLE dbo.Articles ( id INT PRIMARY KEY, title NVARCHAR(100), content NVARCHAR(MAX), embedding VECTOR(5, float16) ); -- Step 2: Insert Sample Data INSERT INTO Articles (id, title, content, embedding) VALUES (1, 'Intro to AI', 'This article introduces AI concepts.', '[0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5]'), (2, 'Deep Learning', 'Deep learning is a subset of ML.', '[0.2, 0.1, 0.4, 0.3, 0.6]'), (3, 'Neural Networks', 'Neural networks are powerful models.', '[0.3, 0.3, 0.2, 0.5, 0.1]'), (4, 'Machine Learning Basics', 'ML basics for beginners.', '[0.4, 0.5, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3]'), (5, 'Advanced AI', 'Exploring advanced AI techniques.', '[0.5, 0.4, 0.6, 0.1, 0.2]'); -- Step 3: Perform a Vector Similarity Search Using VECTOR_DISTANCE function DECLARE @v VECTOR(5, float16) = '[0.3, 0.3, 0.3, 0.3, 0.3]'; SELECT TOP (3) id, title, VECTOR_DISTANCE('cosine', @v, embedding) AS distance FROM dbo.Articles ORDER BY distance; -- Step 4: Optionally Create a Vector Index CREATE VECTOR INDEX vec_idx ON Articles(embedding) WITH ( metric = 'cosine', type = 'diskANN' ); -- Step 5: Perform a Vector Similarity Search DECLARE @qv VECTOR(5, float16) = '[0.3, 0.3, 0.3, 0.3, 0.3]'; SELECT t.id, t.title, t.content, s.distance FROM VECTOR_SEARCH( table = Articles AS t, column = embedding, similar_to = @qv, metric = 'cosine', top_n = 3 ) AS s ORDER BY s.distance, t.title; Conclusion The addition of RHEL10 support in SQL Server 2025 Preview is a major milestone in delivering a modern, secure, and flexible data platform for Linux users. We encourage you explore these new capabilities and share your feedback to help us continue enhancing SQL Server for the Linux ecosystem. You can share your feedback using any of the following methods: Email us at sqlpreviewpackage@microsoft.com with your thoughts and suggestions. Submit your ideas on Azure Ideas (Use the SQL Server on Linux Group on the left side of the page) Alternatively, you can open issues related to the preview packages Issues · microsoft/mssql-docker (github.com) on GitHub. We hope you give SQL Server 2025 preview on RHEL10 a try - and we look forward to hearing what you think!
