June 4, 2017 at 7:51 am
I wanted opinions from my fellow SQL Server DBA's with regards to SQL Server Inplace Upgrade versus a side by side Install. We are currently running SQL Server 2008 R2 on two of our Production Servers and we have SQL Server 2014 running on our Production Business Intelligence Server(i.e. SSAS, SSRS). All of our production installs are default instances. We need to keep them as default instances and since you can only have one default instance, I don't really have a choice other than doing a SQL Server 2016 In place Upgrade, unless I do a refresh install, which means: 1) Uninstalling the current default instance, 2) Installing SQL Server 2016 and rebuilding everything. Our three production Servers are in the cloud( I believe they are virtual, I'm new to this company so I will have to confirm). I've never done an in place install and haven't because I've always had the luxury of doing a fresh install at prior companies. My major concern, is that if there are issues, I will have to completely do an UN-install and reinstall as a fallback plan. If my production servers are virtual, then maybe I can get our server administrators to image the virtual in the event that we have to fall back. Obviously I am going to want to test all of this prior to production implementation and run the upgrade advisor to identify any issues up front, but, wanted your professional opinions.
Thanks in Advance!
June 4, 2017 at 9:51 am
I strongly do not recommend an in-place upgrade. If something goes wrong with the upgrade, you may be looking at reinstalling the *server* to fix the problems.
If the machines are virtual, then ask for a second VM to be spun up, install 2016 into that, test your app against it. Once you're happy set the second VM up as the new prod box, shut down the old and rename (and if necessary resize) the new to match the old.
Apps won't notice, as the connection strings stay the same, and much less risk of failures.
p.s. paragraph breaks make for easier reading.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
June 4, 2017 at 10:19 am
Thanks! That's what I was thinking too. That's pretty much why, I've never done a in place upgrade before.
June 5, 2017 at 6:27 am
Reinforcing what Gail said and adding one more wrinkle. The nice thing about the side-by-side install is that you can use log shipping to set up a process that will have a very minimal amount of downtime. That could be a major consideration for many businesses.
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