Should I go with Microsoft SQL 2014 or stick with 2012?
The difference may not seem significant right now. But you will be better served with ditching SQL 2012 in favor of SQL 2014.
- Longer support period. 2012 will most likely be phased out quicker than 2014, therefore all End-of-Life support and updates will last longer.
- 2014 supports 8 replicas instead of the 4 in its previous version. This fortifies disaster recovery a bit more.
- Memory support in 2014 is 128 GB instead of the 64 GB in two previous versions.
- 2014 has a new feature called Resource Governor which allows instance level I/O throttle as far as MAX_OUTSTANDING_IO_PER_VOLUME is concerned.
- Backup encryption is also enhanced.
- OS support: 2014 version is likely to be supported on later releases of the Windows Servers.
In conclusion, given all the advantages and the lack of any disadvantage, it makes sense to save yourself headaches of going through upgrades later by installing the SQL 2014 now.