Updated October 18th, 2016
Regardless of your branch or patch level, be sure to check out this CSS blog post and KB #2964518 : Recommended updates and configuration options for SQL Server 2012 / 2014 , which is full of useful advice.
For help with acronyms used here or in the resources referenced, seeDefinitions of SQL Server release acronyms.
And of course, please always perform full regression testing before installing any SQL Server update in production.Kendra Little has a nice post about this.
Service Pack 2 Branch
Service Pack 2 (12.0.5000) was released on July 11, 2016, and includes 133 fixes and enhancements including all of the fixes up to and including SP1 CU7. Those from SP1 CU8 should all be found in SP2 CU1, released August 25th. The official Knowledge Base article for SP2 is KB #3171021 , and you can download the service pack here and the updated feature pack here .
Build Name Build # KB Article Date New fixes (public) SP2 Cumulative Update #2 12.0.5522 KB #3188778 2016-10-18 18 (18) SP2 Cumulative Update #1 12.0.5511 KB #3178925 2016-08-24 45 (36) Service Pack 2 12.0.5000 KB #3171021 2016-07-11 133 (53)Some very interesting improvements in Service Pack 2, many of which were already included in SQL Server 2016. There were others, so this list should not be considered exhaustive, just OUR TOP 20 :
Showplan XML will now include any trace flags in effect , actual rows read ,per-operator performance metrics, and more details on spills . New query hints to control memory grants (without Resource Governor). Buffer pool can now exceed 8 TB (I'm sure a lot of us were hampered by this limitation). Better read workload throughput via reduced spinlocks. Automatic soft-NUMA partitioning. Database lock partitioning (without using trace flags 1236 / 9024 also in SP1). Performance improvements in spatial (trace flag 6533) . MAXDOP support for several DBCC CHECK* operations . Dynamic memory object scaling. Import and export UTF-8 data with BCP / BULK INSERT . New DMF, sys.dm_db_incremental_stats_properties (seeConnect #797156). New DMF, sys.dm_exec_input_buffer , for retrieving correlated INPUTBUFFER information. Index usage stats no longer get cleared after a rebuild(seeConnect #739566). New error log diagnostics for tempdb , instant file initialization , andAvailability Group lease timeouts. DBCC CLONEDATABASE() create a stats-only copy of a database with minimal effort (Melissa blogged about this feature for T-SQL Tuesday #80).Service Pack 1 Branch
Service Pack 2 has been released, and it really should be where your efforts are going, if it is possible (yes, I know some people have to stay on older service packs for a variety of reasons).
(Click to show Service Pack 1 Branch details.)
RTM Branch
If you're on RTM still (< 12.0.4000), there is an important security GDR/QFE that has been released through Security Bulletin MS15-058 and KB #3065718 . This issue does not affect Service Pack 1. (And you should start planning to move to the SP2 branch now anyway.)
