copying databases from physical server to Virtual VMWare server

  • Hi, we plan on moving a physical SQL (2000) Database server to Virtual VMWare. The systems people have created the Virtual server already from the physical a few weeks ago. Many updates have occurred on the databases since we created the virtual. So now we need to update the databases. There are 30 user databases totaling about 17GB.

    We need to know if we can simply stop the SQL services on each server and copy the latest files from the physical to the virtual server?

    Can SQL 2000 handle a simple database file copy or do we need to detach/Attach on the Virtual side?

    If not, what is the correct way to update the SQL databases on a Virtual server from a physical?

    thanks,

    Dana

  • You could do a backup and restore from the physical to the virtual machine or you can do a detach and attach. Either way should work fine. I prefer backup restore because there are less files to keep track of and it makes for an easier backout plan should something fail during the cutover.

  • Thanks for the reply. I failed to mention in the original post that the VM server is vreated using P2V. The server name and all it's attributes are the same. Our network guys will make a DNS entry after we shut down the current server.

    Since the server name and SQL instance (default) will be the same is it feasable to just do a physical copy of the files. The server is going to down during this process.

    If we do attach/Detach, we will still have to copy the files anyway and if we do backup/restore we wil have to copy the backup files.

    Has anyone done this?

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