Effort estimation in upgrading SQL Server 2008 to SQL Server 2014

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Effort estimation in upgrading SQL Server 2008 to SQL Server 2014

Benki Chendu

SSCrazy Eights

Points: 8051
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August 31, 2016 at 1:31 am

#312657

Friends,
Does any body have an approximate effort estimation chart to upgrade from SQL Server 2008 to SQL Server 2014?

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Benki Chendu SSCrazy Eights Points: 8051 More actions · Answer 1

Benki Chendu

SSCrazy Eights

Points: 8051

September 1, 2016 at 6:39 am

#1898742

Friends, need some input on this please

Gail Shaw SSC Guru Points: 1004504 More actions · Answer 2

It'll depend on how many things need fixing, anything from no effort to months of work.

Plan for a two-phase project. Test the system on SQL 2014, take note of anything that breaks or gets severe performance regression, then estimate the time required to fix the problems that your testing uncovered.

Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability

We walk in the dark places no others will enter
We stand on the bridge and no one may pass

Benki Chendu SSCrazy Eights Points: 8051 More actions · Answer 3

Benki Chendu

SSCrazy Eights

Points: 8051

September 1, 2016 at 7:51 am

#1898764

Absolutely.

I have roughly made something like this:

Gail Shaw SSC Guru Points: 1004504 More actions · Answer 4

You've got no testing phase, no time allocated to fix issues found. Upgrading to 2014 or beyond WILL have things that need fixing, due to the change to the cardinality estimator.

You can fix them before upgrading, or you can fix them, in production, after upgrading while your users complain and management yells.

And those times are seriously over-exaggerated. Last upgrade I did, three server, the entire list of things you have there took less than 6 hours.

Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability

We walk in the dark places no others will enter
We stand on the bridge and no one may pass

Benki Chendu SSCrazy Eights Points: 8051 More actions · Answer 5

Hi Gila,

Thanks for your inputs.

Of course, i will factor the break fixes and other testing separately.

With respect to these activities, say for a size of 250GB in total, are you saying all these activities could be finished in say 10 hours?

Gail Shaw SSC Guru Points: 1004504 More actions · Answer 6

Depends how long a backup/restore takes, but

Last upgrade I did, three servers, the entire list of things you have there took less than 6 hours.

And that was about a 120GB database

It does not take 6 hours to install an instance of SQL Server, unless you're including the time to download the ISO.

Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability

We walk in the dark places no others will enter
We stand on the bridge and no one may pass

Summer90 SSC-Dedicated Points: 32891 More actions · Answer 7

There is no way to tell you the amount of effort it will take a DBA to upgrade without knowing your environment.

Do you have only a TEST and Prod environment? Do you have a DEV and PQA?.

Do you have any SSIS packages, do you have a TON of users, do you have a lot of batch processes? Do you have a lot of SQL Agent Jobs? Are you doing an IN PLACE upgrade or getting a new server and installing everything new? How many databases are there to upgrade? Are they large of very small ones?