We are needing to upgrade our 2008 R2 SQL server to 2016 but are not able to locate the product key.
When attempting to do the upgrade, the installer asks for the product key instead of prefilling it. All digital data was lost in 2010 due to no backups and a failed hdd, so can not check emails. The person that set it all up left many years ago and we are no longer able to contact them.
1) How do I identify what license it is, standard, enterprise, volume, etc
2) how can I get the product key from Microsoft?
3) Can we upgrade without the product key and not be on the evaluation version?
Thanks for any help