January 13, 2011 at 12:48 pm
Hello -
We have a sister company that needs help upgrading a couple of databases. They want to upgrade the database from SQL2000 to SQL2008 R2. Here is the concern. The server where the database resides is in a data center 1,000 miles away. Oh, did I mention the database is 5 TB? Yes, Terabytes. Wow, was the only think I could say.
Has anyone worked with upgrading a DB that large over a long distance?
Thanks!
Mike
January 13, 2011 at 3:04 pm
What do you need help with? Just moving the database?
Make a backup of the database, save it on removable media, ship it to the new location, and restore it. It's probably best if the backup is compressed with Litespeed or some other backup compression tool. You could also copy it over the network if you have a enough bandwidth to copy the file in a reasonable amount of time. If you use a backup compression tool like Litespeed, you would have to have it installed on both servers.
If you need to minimize downtime, make transaction log backups, copy them over the network to the new location, and apply them to the new database up until the point in time when you are ready to cutover live on the new server and then recover the database.
January 13, 2011 at 3:18 pm
I have heard of upgrades being done that have literally been done with shipping a SAN through Fed Ex for large scale migrations.
These days I'd use Michael's advice. I'd actually get 4-5 consumer grade 2TB drives and stripe a backup across them. FEDEX the drives over, restore them. In the meantime, start log backups and either copy them across the network, or FEDEX them a day later.
restore, keep moving log backups, hopefully you can catch up across the wire and minimize downtime
January 13, 2011 at 9:27 pm
If you need to split the backup into multiple files to get it to fit on multiple media, here is an example of a backup to 10 files. I would do the backup to fast local media, and then copy it to the removable drives. Note that all 10 files will be required for the restore.
I would still suggest using a backup compression program, like Litespeed or Redgate Backup, to reduce the size of the backup files, especially transaction log backups that you might be copying over a WAN connection.
By the way, I have done long distance moves in the last year of several 500+ GB databases using just this method with minimal application downtime (under one hour). Not 5 TB, but the same method should work.
backup database[MyDatabase]
to
disk= 'M:\BackupDir\MyDatabase_db_201101132220_001.BAK' ,
disk= 'N:\BackupDir\MyDatabase_db_201101132220_002.BAK' ,
disk= 'O:\BackupDir\MyDatabase_db_201101132220_003.BAK' ,
disk= 'P:\BackupDir\MyDatabase_db_201101132220_004.BAK' ,
disk= 'Q:\BackupDir\MyDatabase_db_201101132220_005.BAK' ,
disk= 'R:\BackupDir\MyDatabase_db_201101132220_006.BAK' ,
disk= 'S:\BackupDir\MyDatabase_db_201101132220_007.BAK' ,
disk= 'T:\BackupDir\MyDatabase_db_201101132220_008.BAK' ,
disk= 'U:\BackupDir\MyDatabase_db_201101132220_009.BAK' ,
disk= 'V:\BackupDir\MyDatabase_db_201101132220_010.BAK'
with
init,
stats = 5
January 14, 2011 at 1:23 pm
Thank you everyone for your responses.
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