side by side upgrade licensing question

  • Hi I'm planning to do a side by side upgrade of sql 2005 to sql 2008 on the same box.

    My question is, do I need to have a license for each version during the upgrade, or does one license cover both as only one will be in production?

    The 2005 instance will be uninstalled after the upgrade to 2008.

  • Hi Jon,

    From the White paper for SQL 2008 :

    Licensing Note: If you install SQL Server 2008 on a separate computer or as a separate instance on the same computer as part of the upgrade to SQL Server 2008, you have 60 days to complete the upgrade from the earlier version (by removing the earlier version) before you are out of licensing compliance.

    Warning: A relational database that was upgraded to SQL Server 2008 cannot be moved back to an earlier version of SQL Server. You could extract the data out of the SQL Server 2008 instance. However, if the upgrade fails because of a persistent issue such as disk corruption, you must have a verified backup of your original databases to retrieve data from.

    David BAFFALEUF

    David B.

  • Thanks David, my MS contact told me 30days...60 sounds better to me though!

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