Tools to migrate SQL instances to another server

steinooo · 5 Jul 2019 at 12:43

Hi, does anyone have any experience of using a tool for migrating entire SQL instances to another physical machine please?

steinooo · 6 Jul 2019 at 11:04

Tee Hee Johnson said:
Redgate do good, yet expensive, tools. Not sure if they have what you are looking for, but have a look.

Thank you, will check out redgate I'd not heard of them and this topic seems difficult to Google

steinooo · 8 Jul 2019 at 10:49

Vince said:
As above redgate might be of use but more to the point why wouldn't you just back up the databases, restore them to the new server and then reconnect clients? Hardly seems worth finding a "tool" when no tool will be able to give an end-to-end solution for sql migrations.

i'm trying to assess the options with no experience of having done this before. Thoughts going through my head include

1) The storage is all on a SAN, is it possible to simply detach the storage then re-attach the storage to a brand new server with a new SQL version?
2) Your approach of backing them up then restoring them will cause a large downtime due to the sizes of the databases involved, but is the "cleanest" way
3) Clients reconnecting is an issue, because the clients are looking for NETWORKNAME\INSTANCENAME, and you can't have 2 of the same network name online at the same time I believe

steinooo · 8 Jul 2019 at 19:06

I didn't know about recovery mode, so thanks for that tip.

I saw some scripts which can copy the DB permissions. I was rather hoping I could chuck some cash at a tool which will restore the differentials right up until the restore point, meaning next to no downtime.

steinooo · 22 Jul 2019 at 13:07

Little_Crow said:
A little late to the thread

thanks, it's good to hear that the "storage migration" route is possibly an option.

It's 2008 we're moving from, where possible moving to 2017.

Nikumba said:
If you are getting rid of your old server, you could CNAME the new one, with servers like this where we have clients connecting always CNAME the server so can change it without having to reconfigure your clients

Can I assume you mean set up a DNS record pointing the old server/network instance name to the new server?