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Upgrading SQL Server 2003 (Enterprise) to SQL 2008 (Standard)

Keith Bursnall
$organization

Hi,

Getting ready for the upgrade of Tessitura to version 10 has also alerted us to the SQL Server upgrade in March. We do have a problem however, and would be grateful for any input anyone has to offer.

The difficulty we have is upgrading SQL Server 2003 (Enterprise) to SQL 2008 (Standard).

Has anyone else been through this process?

All advice, gratefully received.

Keith Bursnall
Information Systems Manager
 
Royal Opera House
Covent Garden, London WC2E 9DD
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7212 9408
Email: keith.bursnall@roh.org.uk
 
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  • $organization

    Hi Keith -

    It's my understanding (and other IT people jump in if I am wrong) that Microsoft considers the path from Enterprise to Standard a downgrade (no matter if you are going to the "next" version of SQL) and will not allow you to do it as an upgrade. 

    The only option in MS's great brain is to do a clean install to Standard. Which is a big ewww.  This was true for the 2000 -> 2003 path, I'm assuming it is true for 2008. Here's a link to the MS upgrade path doc:

    http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143393.aspx

    You can see that the only supported options from Enterprise are 2008 Enterprise or Datacenter. In other words, once you go Enterprise, there's no going back easily. :P

    Someone else might know of workarounds, but that's my understanding of the situation. When we ran into this for the 2000->2003 upgrade we had to install a clean copy of 2003 Standard on another server and migrate our Tessi to that server. Fortunately, it was when we were already upgrading the server.

    HTH,

    Heather
    Seattle Rep

  • $organization

    Do you mean SQL 2005? We are currently running 2005 and are also planning the upgrade to 2008 but haven't executed anything yet. Are you trying an inplace upgrade or a migration? I'll be very interested to continue following this thread.

    Thanks!

  • $organization in reply to Nathan Campbell

    OK.  I may be wrong here because this is not something we have tried and I am not a SQL expert.  If you think you may want to try this I would strongly suggest some trials in a test environment first but I think you could probably do this:

    • Download the 180 day trial of SQL 2008 Enterprise
    • Upgrade your SQL 2005 Enterprise to the 2008 trial.
    • Confirm everything is working then detach the databases
    • Uninstall the SQL 2008 Enterpise trial and install the SQL 2008 standard version
    • Re-attach your databases.

    This should achieve the DB upgrade without too much scripting required on your part and in the end you will have a licensed SQL 2008 standard install.

  • $organization in reply to Nathan Campbell

    Hi,

    Yes, SQL 2005 (running on Windows Server 2003).

    Sorry for confusion.

    K