Is an unattended upgrade possible? (7 to 2000)
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I have a number of SQL Servers, version 7, which I am going to upgrade to 2000. Can anyone tell me if an unattended upgrade is possible using an .iss file? By unattended, I am only referring to the actual upgrade process. All pre- and post- checks, backups, etc. have been covered; it is just the process of running the installer on the cd to run the in-place upgrade I would like automated.
I have carried out some testing on a virtual machine. I've run through the upgrade, and taken a copy of the .iss file from C:\WINNT. I've then reverted to a pre-upgrade copy of the virtual machine and run the following from the command line:
start \wait C:\SQL2000cd\x86\setup\setupsql.exe -f1 C:\setup.iss
This opens the dialogs as if I had run the setup normally. If I use the silent mode flag (-S) then the command prompt regains control after a minute or two and the server remains the same.
I would like to verify that the .iss file is correctly configured, and have read the following link which shows what each entry represents, but does anyone know if there is a list of possible values anywhere?
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa176598(SQL.80).aspx
I can understand why an unattended upgrade may not be encouraged or even supported but in my circumstance I would like to investigate it as a possible solution. Could anyone tell me whether what I am attempting is possible?
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It's been a while since I have done this type of thing. You are probably better off posting this to a PC Admin group. I am sure you can automate the install, but Servers are not usually the type of thing that you "Automate this way" In fact, I worked for a company tha had 5000 IT people, and we didn't automate server upgrades.
But to answer your question I am sure you read the following
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-US/library/aa216713(SQL.80).aspx
-r to get the .iss file, -s to make it a silent install. As for the options and selections... Well that is why most people don't do silent installs. If these systems are not identical, you could really make a mess of the systems. Below are some other articles/blogs that might be of use to you. As you expected, I don't recommend this at all.
http://blogs.sqlservercentral.com/blogs/haidong_ji/archive/2005/10/14/231.aspx
http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2007/04/10/sql-server-2005-silent-installation-unattended-installation/
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Thank you for the response. Unfortunately, 2 of the links refer to SS2005 and the other is for Analysis Services.
Nevertheless I'll take a look at them this evening in case they can shed any light on my question.
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In response to your points, most of our servers are identical builds (both hardware and software). While I appreciate this doesn't for one minute mean the installations will all go exactly the same, we've got a rollback plan in place to deal with any servers that fail our post-upgrade checks.
However we decide to carry out the upgrades, I will personally be overseeing the first batch and will be able to stop rollout should there be the slightest hint of a problem. The main reason for wanting to automate it is to take the burden of decision making off the techs who'll be sitting in front of the server when the upgrade takes place.
I'm still happy to hear your thoughts, ideas or suggestions about this.
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Seems like Friday probably wasn't the best time to work on this because looking at it again today I realised that the setup.iss file I took from the upgraded virtual machine was actually that generated by the 2000 SP4 installer! Doh!
Managed to get an unattended upgrade started using the correct .iss file and it appears to be chugging away at the moment - will post an update here once I've done some further testing.
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Support for SQL 2000 is ending soon. Any reason why your are not moving to 2005?
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=2852
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We may move to 2005 at some point in the near future but at this point in time I have been tasked with getting our 7 servers to 2000 asap.
I managed to get the unattended upgrade working for both 7 to 2000, and 2000 to 2000 SP4.
I hit a problem where the 2000 installer wouldn't record the correct licensing model to the .iss file when PER PROCESSOR was selected, and an unattended upgrade would fail if Per Processing was specified in the .iss file. This is a known problem with a hotfix (which works!):
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/273769
Once the hotfix was installed, the whole process worked smoothly.
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