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Replace principal server in sql server 2005 database mirroring setup

  • January 10, 2013 at 7:44 am

    #393917

    Hi folks,

    I am a regular SSC reader but haven't yet made any contributions due to time constraints.

    I have a question on db mirroring and I hope I am posting this in the right area.

    We have plans to replace our old principal sql server involved in database mirroring on sql server 2005 standard with a brand new bigger and much powerful box. I was wondering what could be best way to do this without much interrupting the operations....

    We have a 24/7 high OLTP environment and got about 60+ databases mirrored from this server and our data centre is across the border, hence we had to use certificates. Most of the db's are not over couple of gigs except about 5 of them would be about 10+ GB's. the mirroring is set in high safety without witness mode.

    So the plan is....

    •Setup the new box with the sql installed and all the best practices configuration done

    •failover all the db's from the current principal to the mirror server sit across the border.

    •make sure the mirror server is now set as principal

    •break the mirroring

    •turn off the old principal server (which is now mirror)

    •backup all the databases on the principal server

    •steal the IP address from the old principal in order to be used it for the new principal server

    •switch the new server on with the IP address of the old the principal server

    •copy the most recent backups from the principal server and restore them with NORECOVRY

    •restore any pending transactions

    •Setup mirroring between the current principal server and the new server as a mirror server

    •Failover to the newly built server which is now a mirror server

    •Finally the newly built server is configured as principal and the original mirror server as mirror

    I know there are some other steps like making sure the certificates are transferred and created on the new server is not covered.

    I see the only downtime here is the blip while stealing the IP. Is this sound like a viable plan or anyone suggests any better way of doing it.

    Thanks in advance for your help.

    AK 🙂

  • January 11, 2013 at 10:11 am

    #1576416

    This is exactly what I did for the past few months for my servers upgrade. It works fine for me but I am interested to learn if there is a better way to do this.

  • January 11, 2013 at 12:00 pm

    #1576468

    Thanks for reading the post and commenting. I am glad to know that I am on right path. I will definitely let you know all the issues I may encounter during the implementation.

    I however have a question as I am not too sure about it.

    When you failover to mirror server and then break the mirroring and set up the mirroring between the mirror(which is now a principal server after the failover) and the new server, does it allow you to set up mirroring from there or would it complain about logs not been in order?

    Thanks,

    AK

  • January 11, 2013 at 12:34 pm

    #1576480

    This is just like setting up mirroring from scratch, as long as you drop it cleanly and set it up properly, it should work. I don't have any issue doing it so far. A side note, you might have done it but you should probably test all the steps in a test environment before doing it in production.

  • January 14, 2013 at 3:57 am

    #1576824

    Thanks for your reply,

    I will indeed test this before doing it on production db's.

    I will post here after the implementation 🙂

    Regards,

    AK

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