April 30, 2004 at 4:53 am
Hi folks
Does it make sense to use replication to move a DB to a new server? The scenario we are currently considering is as follows:
- Existing server S1, running DB1
- Application server A1, DSNs pointing to DB1 on S1
- New server S2, currently no DB
To move the database to the new server, we do the following:
- Set up replication on DB1, to replicate to DB2 on S2
- At some point, when we're confident DB2 and S2 are stable etc, we change the DSNs on A1 to point to DB2 on S2
- We can then switch off S1 and remove the machine completely.
Does this make sense? Are we missing something? Is there a better way to move to a new server with as little downtime as possible?
Many thanks in advance
Jon Little
Heidelberg, Germany
April 30, 2004 at 3:07 pm
Could work. By using replication you can make sure that both databases are equal at some point in time.
Before migrating, you can set dba1 in single user, to stop transactions, force replication and the migrate the server
May 3, 2004 at 10:45 pm
The only thing that I think could get you is replication may not generate the same schema as exists on the source database. e.g. primary keys become unique constraints.
I think you will need to think about this - you may need to create the tables etc on the target server yourself. You may need to add "NOT FOR REPLICATION" to identity columns and triggers as well.
Cheers
Stephen
May 4, 2004 at 5:05 am
May 4, 2004 at 6:53 am
Restoring to the new server (or even detatching, then copying the physical files over, then reattaching) is an option, but we are talking about sales 24/7, so any downtime costs us money.
Total size of the DB is over 15GB, so downtime would not be short...
Jon
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