March 13, 2012 at 10:02 am
I have an older database server which I finally have approval to upgrade, I would like to get this onto the latest platform 2012 once it is released.
I did some reading which lead me to believe that i will first need to go from 2000 to 2008, before going to 2012.
My question is this:
Am I able to setup a 2008 server with an instance name say SERVER\SQL2008 and then create some sort of alias which allows existing software to see it as SERVER\SQL?
Doing this would allow me to have the servers on the same windows platform, while I proof test the second upgrade.
I apologize if this has been asked before, but my quick search of the forum yielded no useful results (which leads me to believe that this is not possible)
Regards
Martin
March 13, 2012 at 10:22 am
Short answer, not centrally. You can make an alias on client machines and point that to a particular server/port, but really you don't want to be addressing clients with the windows name.
Create a DNS entry, with a fully qualified name, choose a port, and then point clients to this. When you then change to 2012 later, you can easily change the DNS rather than mess with the clients or server again.
March 13, 2012 at 10:50 am
I don't have full control of the clients unfortunately, as there is some old software distributed throughout the company...
I guess I will need to have the 2012 instance named something during my testing phase, then have downtime while I uninstall the 2008 and install the replacement 2012 instance of the same name.
Thanks for the quick response.
Martin
March 13, 2012 at 11:28 am
you don't necessarily need to uninstall 2008. You could install 2012 on another machine, under another name, and then do a name change of the host and the SQL instance.
March 13, 2012 at 12:32 pm
We don't have spare hardware available 🙁
IT runs on a shoestring...
March 13, 2012 at 1:23 pm
Good luck, then, and an outage is probably the best thing to do.
March 13, 2012 at 1:24 pm
And backups, good, solid backups.
Make sure you script as much stuff as possible if the uninstall/reinstall flakes. You'll want it all handy.
March 13, 2012 at 2:08 pm
Thanks for the advice, I will certainly make backups prior and post, probably image the entire system (not too big, just 250g or so).
I just took the smallest DB I have on that server, and attached it to a trial of 2008, changed its compatibility, then detached, and attached to a 2012 trial and changed compatibility again, and it all seemed to go very smoothly.
Do you guys know if the server would tell me if there are deprecated features in there, or would they not come to the surface until called?
Regards
Martin
March 13, 2012 at 2:11 pm
Once you attach to 2008, you can run the Upgrade Advisor, which should catch things.
The 2012 version of UA
March 13, 2012 at 2:11 pm
Marts (3/13/2012)
Do you guys know if the server would tell me if there are deprecated features in there, or would they not come to the surface until called?
Features that have been removed will only throw errors when they are run. You should really run upgrade adviser against the DB before you try to upgrade.
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
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