Upgrade 2005 to 2008

Can anyone tell me the potential/frequent issues noticed during upgrade from sql 2005 to 2008 version.

What are the solutions and preventive measures?

Rgds

Aj

Matt,

Can you please advise,what do you mean by "Make sure your backups are usable first",unabl to add comments via "Add new comment" button,hence posted my comments here.

Matt,thank you for asking, When I click on "Add new comment" button there is no change in the screen,nither I see the comment box where I can input my comments.I am not sure how can I update my comments?

Rgds, Ajit

asked Jul 27 '10 at 12:13 AM in Default

pits
830 ● 43 ● 76 ● 83

Ajit - what do you mean about add new comment? Can you describe a bit more about what it says? Because I tested this last week and it was OK - so maybe I'm doing something different?

Jul 27 '10 at 04:39 AM Matt Whitfield ♦♦

Ajit - Ok thanks - one final question - can you let me know what O/S and Browser you are using?

Thanks again

Jul 28 '10 at 05:03 AM Matt Whitfield ♦♦

(comments are locked)

3 answers:

2005 to 2008 is generally a pretty smooth upgrade, but it's worth taking all usual precautions:

Make sure your backups are usable first
Upgrade side-by-side if possible, rather than in-place
Make sure all statistics are updated, ideally take the opportunity to reindex all indices beforehand
Make sure you have a backout plan if it all goes pear shaped

This question also has a couple of useful links.

answered Jul 27 '10 at 12:28 AM

Matt Whitfield ♦♦
29.2k ● 56 ● 63 ● 87

By "Make sure your backups are usable first", I assume you mean "make sure you can restore from the backup to a new similar server"...

(Clarifying for Ajit...)

Jul 27 '10 at 02:07 AM ThomasRushton ♦

@ThomasRushton - absolutely, yes.

Jul 27 '10 at 04:37 AM Matt Whitfield ♦♦

(comments are locked)

There are a few T-SQL commands that have become deprecated in 2008. One of the big ones is BACKUP LOG WITH NOLOG and BACKUP LOG WITH TRUNCATEONLY no longer works. You can trace for Deprecation Final Support Event in Profiler which will let you know if your using any commands that will not work in 2008.

It's also a very good idea to run the Upgrade Advisor and review the output.

answered Jul 27 '10 at 12:34 AM

Nick Kavadias
466 ● 3 ● 3 ● 7

(comments are locked)

Personally, I would always go for upgrading to new hardware / vm. That way, you've got no problems with going back to the previous version.

Check your backups anyway
Check the database structures (DBCC CheckDB)
Matt suggests rebuilding index stats - I would leave that until it's on the new box, assuming that the new box is a more powerful server...
Detach the database
Copy the database & log files to the new server
Reattach on the old server
Attach on the new server
Side-by-side testing

Backout plan? Well, you've not destroyed anything...

I've prepared a little list of other things to look at when migrating / upgrading on my blog. If you can spot anything missing, let me know!

answered Jul 27 '10 at 02:13 AM