Best Migration path from Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 from current Windows server 2008 R2 to Windows Server 2019

Question

I am running Visual Studio 2008 (use DTS/SSIS/SSRS) and 2010 (use for creating web-pages using asp.net) on Windows server 2008 R2. We have a new server with Windows Server 2019 std edition. Looking for best migration path which will include which version of Visual Studio will include features of both 2008 and 2010. Thanks in advance for help!

Answer 1

The Windows Server is irrelevant when talking about Visual Studio. VS is for developing applications, it doesn't care what you deploy those apps to.

If you are using any version of Visual Studio then the recommendation is to always upgrade to the latest version, currently that is VS 2022. Normally you can open older solutions/projects in newer versions of VS and it'll auto-upgrade the solution/project files. This doesn't update the code or target frameworks or anything, just the files needed by VS. However you're talking about versions of VS that have been out of support for a while so the auto-upgrade may not work correctly and you'll need to fix up the issues yourself. But you should be aware that you still need to upgrade your actual codebase as well.

SSIS -

Currently the SSIS extension that is needed to work with SSIS has not been released for VS 2022. They tend to run a few months behind the release. As such I would expect it to be released soon. Until then you might do better to stay on VS 2008 for just SSIS. Once the extension is released for VS 2022 you can upgrade that project as well and remove VS 2008 altogether. Alternatively if you need to move off of VS2008 now then you can also install Visual Studio 2019 and add the SSIS extension to it. You can then use this older version of VS until the extension is updated.

Note that SSIS projects are tied to the version of SSIS you will be running them against. Therefore you'll need to update your SSIS package to target the newer SSIS version you intend to use. But SSDT (which is what the SSIS extension comes from) only supports "current" versions of SSIS. If you are not upgrading your SQL Server to a current version of SQL then you cannot use the newer SSIS tools either. Refer to support documentation for SSDT to determine which version you'll need for your specific SQL version.

Web App

Current versions of VS are really built for MVC 5. Chances are you are running an older version of MVC (or web forms). If you intend to upgrade to MVC 5 (you should if you haven't yet) then you'll need to follow the migration documents that you can find online. However if your web app is currently MVC 4 then in the VS installer go to the Components section where you can add additional components and ensure you check the option to add support for MVC 4. This will allow you to at least open the project in VS. If your project is older than that then you cannot load the project in VS at all (this has been true for a while) and you'll need to create a new project instead.

Answer 2

Thank you for detailed explanations. One thing I forgot to mention in my original question post is version of SQL server I will be using. I have license for SQL Server 2012 and planning on using it, at least for the first pass. I cannot go higher version as it requires license upgrade purchase and kinda no purchases are allowed at the moment. Having said that, I wonder if I can use even VS2019 (which you had mentioned has SSIS extension) or will I have to go even older version first which will work with SQL Server 2012?!