Upgrade to 2012
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Thinking of upgrading to SQL 2012 maybe early next year, are there any GOTCHAs or known issues with 2012.
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I had one machine have an issue with installing the data tools. It was a dev sandbox server so I didn't spend enough time to figure it out before it was rewiped again, but I suspect this was the culprit.
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/ssdt/thread/0b74fa02-1897-4763-8a43-587a62c057cf/
Other than that everything is covered pretty well here.
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For upgrades, it can depend on how you use it, and if you are currently using Database Projects. One example, if you have leveraged Database Unit Tests, the current version of SSDT doesn't support them. There are more details on the SSDT blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ssdt/archive/2011/11/21/sql-server-data-tools-ctp4-vs-vs2010-database-projects.aspx
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Bobby Glover (7/12/2012)
Thinking of upgrading to SQL 2012 maybe early next year, are there any GOTCHAs or known issues with 2012.Which version are you upgrading from?
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"Ya can't make an omelette without breaking just a few eggs" 😉
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The guide that Benjamin posted the link to above is a good place to start. It's a pretty large document so you might want to skim it first and just read the details that might impact you.
I also wrote a series on my BI Admin about my blog SQL Server 2012 upgrade experience. It went pretty smoothly thanks to a lot of testing. Here's a link to an overview of the series you can use to see if you're interested in the rest: http://www.biadmin.com/2012/07/sql-2012-upgrade-series-overview.html
[font="Tahoma"]Bryant E. Byrd, BSSE MCDBA MCAD[/font]
Business Intelligence Administrator
MSBI Administration Blog -
I have been working on a Data Warehouse Project since October 2011.
I believe that considering SQL Server 2012 is a viable option considering it will probably take a while before we go live and the cost and risk of upgrading from 2008 R2 in the future.
It was supposed to go live at the end of July 2012 but that is not going to happen.
The current completion date is January 28 2013.
Initially after 2012 was rejected and they were going with 2008 R2 Standard Edition I tried to make a case for Enterprise Edition.
I recently requested an independent audit for a number of reasons to justify some technical inefficiencies and it came into question as to why we were not using Enterprise for a Data Warehouse.
I was able to quickly get approval for the Enterprise Edition.
So my question is do you think that starting off as 2012 preproduction is a good move or not?
Typically I would not recommend going to a new version until at least SP1 is released.
Personally I would rather deal with work arounds in the new version that to have to worry about the cost, effort and risk of an upgrade.
You thoughts, ideas and recommendations are very much welcome.
For better, quicker answers on T-SQL questions, click on the following...
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Best+Practices/61537/For better answers on performance questions, click on the following...
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/SQLServerCentral/66909/ -
One issue I consider fairly serious is the gaps in the Identity sequences when you restart the SQL Server Service (failovers etc). For a standard identity (1,1) you can get gaps of up to 1000.
This bug has been discussed in this forum and raised with Microsoft. Microsoft have givin it a priority of "normal". I don't expect a fix in SP1. There is a work around, see http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1318258-2799-1.aspx
Cheers
Leo
Leo
Nothing in life is ever so complicated that with a little work it can't be made more complicated. -
Welsh Corgi (7/15/2012)
I have been working on a Data Warehouse Project since October 2011.I believe that considering SQL Server 2012 is a viable option considering it will probably take a while before we go live and the cost and risk of upgrading from 2008 R2 in the future.
It was supposed to go live at the end of July 2012 but that is not going to happen.
The current completion date is January 28 2013.
We started out with one external vendor and I was started as a a DBA/Analyst. As of last Wednesday after a number of developments, I was designated as the "Technical Lead of the Data Warehouse Project", ouch.
Initially after 2012 was rejected and they were going with 2008 R2 Standard Edition I tried to make a case for Enterprise Edition.
I recently requested an independent audit for a number of reasons to justify some technical inefficiencies and it came into question as to why we were not using Enterprise for a Data Warehouse.
I was able to quickly get approval for the Enterprise Edition.
So my question is do you think that starting off as 2012 preproduction is a good move or not?
Typically I would not recommend going to a new version until at least SP1 is released.
Personally I would rather deal with work arounds in the new version that to have to worry about the cost, effort and risk of an upgrade.
You thoughts, ideas and recommendations are very much welcome.
SQL Server 2012 seems to be pretty solid so far. We upgraded our 2008 R2 servers in-place about a month ago and haven't had any trouble. We did it on a Saturday and the end-users never noticed.
As far as your project dates, you might want to consider taking an Agile approach to your development life cycle. If you're going to sell it to upper management, though, you're going to have to know what you're talking about or bring in a knowledgeable consultant. If you need help, I can recommend Ken Collier[/url] author of Agile Analytics. We've had him out to coach our development teams and he knows his stuff.
[font="Tahoma"]Bryant E. Byrd, BSSE MCDBA MCAD[/font]
Business Intelligence Administrator
MSBI Administration Blog -
Similar question... We have a commercial web site using ASP.Net and SQL 2005 back-end.
The web site is usually fairly quiet but experience very big spikes of activity during "sales" (which happen at pre-defined dates only due to french laws).
We have to change our hosting and think it might be a good opportunity to upgrade the database side.
Do you think it would be more risky to jump straight to 2012 rather than 2008R2?
We are not planning (please don't shout at me!) to do much testing... 😀
Thanks
Eric
PS: our database is relatively small (~10Gbs) but we managed to reach sustained 90% cpu usage during a recent activity peak (with four dual core CPUs)
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Eric Mamet (7/17/2012)
Similar question... We have a commercial web site using ASP.Net and SQL 2005 back-end.The web site is usually fairly quiet but experience very big spikes of activity during "sales" (which happen at pre-defined dates only due to french laws).
We have to change our hosting and think it might be a good opportunity to upgrade the database side.
Do you think it would be more risky to jump straight to 2012 rather than 2008R2?
We are not planning (please don't shout at me!) to do much testing... 😀
Thanks
Eric
PS: our database is relatively small (~10Gbs) but we managed to reach sustained 90% cpu usage during a recent activity peak (with four dual core CPUs)
Not shouting! 🙂
You definitely need to test and it's not really that hard if you can scratch up some hardware. You can use SQL Server Profiler to collect some traces and use the distributed replay tool that comes with SQL Server 2012 to play the queries back against a test server. The effort is minimal. It's still OK if you hardware doesn't match the live environment exactly; your tests may take longer to run on inferior hardware and you're not validating the performance of the upgrade but you can get a fairly accurate assessment of whether the application will still work or not.
Here is a good place to start looking into distributed replay: SQL Server Distributed Replay
Even someone that knows all the tiny little details about your particular application isn't going to be able to tell you whether or not you'll be safe with the upgrade without doing some form of testing.
[font="Tahoma"]Bryant E. Byrd, BSSE MCDBA MCAD[/font]
Business Intelligence Administrator
MSBI Administration Blog -
I'll try to put some testing, then...
Promise!
Thanks
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Thanks for the information... I just completed the upgrade from SQL 2008 R2 to SQL 2012. Everything seem to work fine, but the Linked Server linking to SQL Server 2000. It seems like there is native driver SQLNCLI10 there and the connection is there.. I am able to see the catalogs, but when I query I get this error:
Msg 8522, Level 16, State 3, Line 1 Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MS DTC) has stopped this transaction.
Linked Server was working fine with SQL 2008 R2 version. Please suggest what I need to do.... thanks a lot.
Tatsu (7/15/2012)
Welsh Corgi (7/15/2012)
I have been working on a Data Warehouse Project since October 2011.I believe that considering SQL Server 2012 is a viable option considering it will probably take a while before we go live and the cost and risk of upgrading from 2008 R2 in the future.
It was supposed to go live at the end of July 2012 but that is not going to happen.
The current completion date is January 28 2013.
We started out with one external vendor and I was started as a a DBA/Analyst. As of last Wednesday after a number of developments, I was designated as the "Technical Lead of the Data Warehouse Project", ouch.
Initially after 2012 was rejected and they were going with 2008 R2 Standard Edition I tried to make a case for Enterprise Edition.
I recently requested an independent audit for a number of reasons to justify some technical inefficiencies and it came into question as to why we were not using Enterprise for a Data Warehouse.
I was able to quickly get approval for the Enterprise Edition.
So my question is do you think that starting off as 2012 preproduction is a good move or not?
Typically I would not recommend going to a new version until at least SP1 is released.
Personally I would rather deal with work arounds in the new version that to have to worry about the cost, effort and risk of an upgrade.
You thoughts, ideas and recommendations are very much welcome.
SQL Server 2012 seems to be pretty solid so far. We upgraded our 2008 R2 servers in-place about a month ago and haven't had any trouble. We did it on a Saturday and the end-users never noticed.
As far as your project dates, you might want to consider taking an Agile approach to your development life cycle. If you're going to sell it to upper management, though, you're going to have to know what you're talking about or bring in a knowledgeable consultant. If you need help, I can recommend Ken Collier[/url] author of Agile Analytics. We've had him out to coach our development teams and he knows his stuff.
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Laura_SqlNovice (7/18/2012)
Thanks for the information... I just completed the upgrade from SQL 2008 R2 to SQL 2012. Everything seem to work fine, but the Linked Server linking to SQL Server 2000. It seems like there is native driver SQLNCLI10 there and the connection is there.. I am able to see the catalogs, but when I query I get this error:Msg 8522, Level 16, State 3, Line 1 Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MS DTC) has stopped this transaction.
Linked Server was working fine with SQL 2008 R2 version. Please suggest what I need to do.... thanks a lot.
You probably need to change the Server type to Other data source and use the SQL Server Native Client 10.0 as the provider.
If that doesn't work, you may need to consider copying the necessary data to a different server, depending on what the needs are for that data. I don't suppose there is any chance of getting that SQL 2000 server upgraded? The support lifecycle for it just about completely over if I remember correctly.
[font="Tahoma"]Bryant E. Byrd, BSSE MCDBA MCAD[/font]
Business Intelligence Administrator
MSBI Administration Blog
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