Cody K (4/11/2014)
I think you are MEANT to do a full backup, begin a trace to record a day of work, take another backup, and then use replays to compare the end results. Right? But, not many people appear to have gone into depth with examples of how to do the "best practice"... so few do it.
You're spot on Cody. Here are some of the things that I did when I performed the upgrade to 2012 and plan to do it all again for 2014. It's really not that hard. Just a little time consuming.
- Trace replays against Data Engine and Analysis Services databases. I collect queries for a couple weeks and play them back as fast as the new servers can handle them. A little load testing while you're at it never hurts. 😀
- Process all the Analysis Services databases. It's real easy to write a PowerShell script to loop through all the DBs and process them. I'll try to remember to post my script when I find it (or rewrite it :ermm:).
- Run a good cross-section of the SSIS packages. Really, you should run them all if you can. We have very fine-grained packages and last time I counted there were over 1,700 of them. I work with the developers to identify a batch that exercises all the special cases and custom components we use.
- Reporting Services is probably more of a manual process. Our SSRS implementation is using SharePoint Integrated Mode so our SP team manages that and I don't have to get involved too much there.