In Place migration

  • Hi,

    in my enviornment active passive cluster is running with SQL server 2014 sp2 and now we are planning to upgrade to sql server 2016 sp2.
    can any one guide me step by step procedure to upgrade on sql cluster.

  • Hi,
    there are  much samples for your question in this forum and on google.
    It depends, if you have got maintenance windows for your server, or if the server is 24/7.
    You could Upgrade the passiv sql server node. Failover and check if everything is running fine. If yes, upgrade the next passiv node.
    You should have current backups and a  plan, if everything will go wrong.
    Kind regards,
    Andreas

  • I agree with Andreas. Make sure you have a backup first 🙂
    Depends on a number of things but some quick ideas that come to mind.
    If you're on VM, clone the environment and try the upgrade on that first. You could take a snapshot but I'm not sure if that works in all cases (like with RDM's for example).
    If you have a test environment, use that one to test the upgrade
    If you're on physical servers and if you have an instance on that cluster that is not being used (fyi we have those, so we have one readily available if a future project requires one), upgrade that one first and see if all goes well.
    When none of the above applies and you only have the production instance to go with, cross your fingers and upgrade the passive node first. Fail over and check the SQL error log, test connections from the clients etc...
    One small note: don't be alarmed if the SQL Agent resource fails. When you fail over, SQL starts upgrading the system databases and runs a number of scripts. It doesn't allow connections until that is finished. If that takes a long time, SQL Agent times out connecting to the engine and so the resource fails to come online. Just wait for the db engine to finish upgrading and then start the Agent resource.

    Also check out VirtualBox - I use that to mimic an entire data centre on my laptop and run all kinds of testing. You get the hang of installing clusters, you can mess around as much as you like, you get to document the process with screen shots and everything, you can test rollback etc...

    Good luck!

  • Here are the step by step process to upgrade SQL Server to the latest version:
    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/database-engine/install-windows/upgrade-sql-server-using-the-installation-wizard-setup?view=sql-server-2017

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