SQL Server Components and Features by OS

SQL Server 2017 is available on Windows and Linux. The full feature set is available on Windows, and most of the database management features and Integration Services are available on Linux. The chart compares components and key features available on Windows and Linux versions. Many features not currently available on Linux are expected in future releases. (For more details, see the release notes for SQL Server on Linux at https://docs.microsoft.com/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-release-notes#Unsupported.)

SQL Server on Linux is not a shimmed or virtual implementation of SQL Server for Windows running on Linux, but rather it is the core product running natively on a Linux distribution. This is possible because SQL Server runs on a platform abstraction layer, called SQLPAL, which communicates between the core SQL Server product and the underlying OS. The abstraction layer was expanded to work with Linux, which means a release of SQL Server on Linux is the same software delivered to Windows.