64-Bit SQL 2005 (Enterprise)

  • I have read a lot about upgrading to 64-bit SQL and from a database perspective it is only a matter of dettaching from 32-bit and attaching to 64-bit.  Does anyone know what would happen if you had to go in the other direction i.e. from 64-bit SQL to 32-bit?  In our environment we might need to do that if a 64-bit server went down or in a DR scenario where hardware availability could be an issue.

     

     

     

  • It is my understanding that you can go either direction without any problems.

  • Thanks!  Obviously we will test before we trust, but I wanted to see if there were any absolutes before we go through the exercise.

  • I'm pretty sure you would have some issues with SSIS packages that run in SQL Agent jobs - on 64-bit SQL Server you have to call the 32-bit dtexec if you require OLE DB providers that do not have a 64-bit version (ie. Excel, Access, Oracle) - these have to be called via command line references - the path to the 32-bit version on a 64-bit machine is 'Program Files (x86)' where as on a 32-bit machine it would simply be 'Program Files'.....the command line would not find the path specified.

    There are workarounds - creating an (x86) directory with a copy of Program Files in it.

    Aside from this specific issue, I would think most else would be pretty transparent...

  • There is one other 32-bit/64-bit difference regarding SSIS.  If you have any scripts in your SSIS packages, the need to be precompiled before they are deployed on the 64-bit server.  Our development systems are 32-bit, but our servers or 64-bit, and this caught us on our first deployment of an SSIS package.

  • Thanks to all who have responded!  All of this information is helpful.

    Bob McEuen

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