You can upgrade instances of SQL Server 2012 (11.x), SQL Server 2014 (12.x), SQL Server 2016 (13.x), SQL Server 2017 (14.x), or SQL Server 2019 (15.x) directly to SQL Server 2022 (16.x). For SQL Server 2008 (10.0.x) and SQL Server 2008 R2 (10.50.x), you need to either do a side-by-side upgrade, or a migration, to move to SQL Server 2022 (16.x) as there's no common overlap between a supported mainstream operating system. Before running setup to upgrade, review the following articles about the upgrade process and the release notes.
Check out what's new in each version of the product:
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