Information sharing: SQL Server 2025 is now GA – Business Central to Support it in 2026 Release Wave 1 (BC28)

Hi, Readers.
I would like to share a piece of information today, at Ignite, Microsoft announce the general availability of SQL Server 2025. This marks the latest milestone in the more than 30-year history of SQL Server. More details: SQL Server 2025 is Now Generally Available

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.

As you might know, the deployment option for Business Central production environments still includes on-premises.
There can be many reasons to prefer to deploy Business Central on-premises rather than using online deployments.
PS:

Kennie shared an important message yesterday..

Good news for Business Central customers that run their environments on-premises: when you at some point upgrade to SQL Server 2025 (that became generally available yesterday), you can now use up to 256 GB of memory in SQL Server Standard Edition.

Adding memory is often a really cheap way to get better query performance as data can reside in-memory in the data cache.

Business Central 2026 release wave 1 will of course support running on SQL Server 2025.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kennie_msdyn365bc-performance-activity-7396793686438739968-Hc35?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAABrxul8BUTv9mp6ntr62O4-TROdxRN6Wz4o

Yes, the next major release – 2026 release wave 1 (BC28) – will include support for SQL Server 2025.🎊🎉🎆
This is great news for on-premise customers. Stay tuned for more updates.

PS:
1. Installation considerations for Microsoft SQL Server and Business Central

2. System requirements for Business Central 2025 release wave 2

END

Hope this will help.

Thanks for reading.

ZHU