Upper limit for autoincrement primary key in SQL Server

Question

What is the upper limit for an autoincrement primary key in SQL Server? What happens when an SQL Server autoincrement primary key reaches its upper limit?

Answer 1

I'll tell you what happens.... my data stopped inserting into that specific table. The database still works but I found data missing and inconsistent. With a little research, I found the error table, then ran a manual insert. The error is the same as above.

Had to change the column to BIGINT. On a 26GB database on a somewhat slow server, took about 30 minutes. On the archive version of the database (150GB or so) it took quite a bit longer.

Fortunately, not too many relationships for this table so the pain was pretty slight.