Upgrading from 2008 SP2/SP3 in a large replicated environmnt

  • I need some advice on how to best upgrade the Windows Servers and SQL Servers in our replicated environment - We are hoping to go from 2008 SP2/3 to SQL 2014. In our set up, the Distributor, Publisher, and Subscribers are all separate physical servers; details of which are below:

    Server version for all servers - Copyright (c) 1988-2008 Microsoft Corporation Enterprise Edition (64-bit) on Windows NT 5.2 <X64> (Build 3790: Service Pack 2)

    Distributor:

    MSSQL version - Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (SP3) - 10.0.5500.0 (X64) Sep 21 2011 22:45:45)

    Publisher:

    MSSQL version - Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (SP2) - 10.0.4000.0 (X64) Sep 16 2010 19:43:16 )

    Subscriber 1:

    MSSQL version - Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (SP3) - 10.0.5500.0 (X64) Sep 21 2011 22:45:45 )

    Subscriber 2:

    MSSQL Version - Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (SP3) - 10.0.5512.0 (X64) Aug 22 2012 19:25:47)

    I've read online that you shouldn't attempt to upgrade more than a 2 version difference between your distributor and your other servers...but the article below from MS doesn't confirm that (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143699(v=sql.100).aspx), as it states that the publisher's version can't be greater than the distributor's version...so it is my understanding that you "can" do so, as long as you follow the steps in the reference document - is this accurate?

    During this upgrade we would like to convert all these physical servers to VM's so we can replace the OS versions to Windows Server 2012R2 Enterprise Edition (with exception of Subscriber 2, which will be Developer edition). What would be the best approach to go about this?

    My assumption would be to start from scratch: Build up the VM's with the newer version of windows (using the same domain name for the server), install the SQL 2014, configure everything as needed, then restore all the databases...drop the physical server from the domain, add the new servers to the domain, then set up replication all over again entirely (we have about 7 TB of data to replicate though, so this involves significant downtime) – but is there a better way?

    My question to the replication experts out there is - what steps should I follow to make this upgrade go smoothly or is there a better method altogether?

    ______________________________________________________________________________Never argue with an idiot; Theyll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience

  • Has anyone else been through this?

    ______________________________________________________________________________Never argue with an idiot; Theyll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience

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