Upgrading to SQL Server 2008 R2
and SQL Server codename “Denali”
Dandy Weyn
What is an upgrade?
Existing version of SQL Server to a higher version
Upgrade versus Migration
SQL Server Migration Assistant
What people try to accomplish…
VIRTUALIZATION
HAPPY UPGRADE
CONSOLIDATION
Upgrade Methods
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Less granular control over upgrade process
Instance remains offline during part of upgrade
Not best practice for all components
Considerations for Rollback Strategy
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More granular control over upgrade process at DB level
Can be used to perform test migration
Ability to run systems side-by-side for parallel runs
Relatively straightforward rollback strategy
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•
More granular control over upgrade process at DB level
Can be used to perform test migration
Ability to run systems side-by-side for parallel runs
Relatively straightforward rollback strategy
Goes frequently together with OS upgrade
Goes frequently together with platform upgrade (x86>x64)
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•
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Easier, mostly automated, generally fast overall process
System data upgraded
May require no additional hardware
Applications remain pointing to same server/DB
Usually require additional hardware
Server/database name changes
Not practical for VLDB unless utilizing SAN
•
•
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Requires additional Hardware
Server/Database name changes
Not practical for VLDB unless utilizing SAN
In Place Upgrade Process
Point of no return
Instance is still
available
Install SQL
Server binaries
Install
prerequisites
Check for
upgrade
blockers
Stop
service
Redirect
services to
new binaries
Start service in
single-user
mode
Instance is no
longer available
Attach
resource
database
Stop
service
Restart
service
Execute various
upgrade scripts
Start
updating all
databases
Partial availability
starts here
Remove
old
binaries
Instance becomes
available
Important steps for a happy upgrade experience
PRE UPGRADE
Plan and Assess
Understand Upgrade Strategies
Clean your environment
Have a backup
THE UPGRADE
Document
Upgrade
Determine Success
POST UPGRADE
Decommission
Document
Get Ready for More
Your Key to Success …
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•
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Understanding Upgrade Strategies
Plan for Upgrade
Perform the Upgrade
Post-Upgrade
Tools
• SQL Server Upgrade Advisor
• SQL Server Best Practices Analyzer
In Place Upgrade
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•
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Copy Database Wizard
Backup / Restore
SSIS Object Transfer
Attach / Detach
Upgrade Path Considerations
SQL SERVER VERSIONS
2000 SP4+
2005 SP2 +
COMPONENTS
DB Engine
RS
NS *
AS
DTS
IS
Standard
Developer
Enterprise
EDITIONS
Desktop
Workgroup
Personal
PLATFORMS
32-bit
64-bit (IA64 and x64)
LANGUAGES
All 2000
All 2005
Pre-Upgrade Considerations
• Document existing SQL Server solution
•
•
•
•
sp_configure
SQLDIAG.EXE
sp_dboption
Configurations: SAN, networks, and security
• Capture performance baseline data
• System level (WMI, Counters, etc.)
• Application level (query response, concurrent users, etc.)
• Develop criteria and unit / verification tests
• Optional: capture plans for complex queries
Deciding on Upgrade Strategy
• Upgrade In-Place or Side-by-Side
• Database size and number of objects
• Local maintenance jobs
• Tolerance for downtime
• Hardware capacity / age
• System dependencies & other applications
• Back-out time
Pre-Upgrade Tasks: Backward Compatibility
• Some features are discontinued:
They do not appear in SQL Server 2008 R2 / Denali
• Examples
•
•
•
•
•
Undocumented system stored procedures
Virtual cube
Virtual dimension
DUMP / LOAD database
Backup with TRUNCATE ONLY
• Some are deprecated:
• They won’t be supported in a future SQL Server release (e.g. Notification
Services)
Some Known Compatibility Issues
•
Applications work fine on 8.0/9.0 compatibility mode but fails in 10.0 mode or
higher
Additional ANSI SQL standards enforcements in 2008/R2
(e.g. left and right outer joins using *= and =* no longer supported)
Modify SQL statements to be standards
compliant (will still work if in 8.0
compatibility mode)
Some Known Compatibility Issues
•
References to system and/or undocumented objects
Accessing system tables/stored procedures or undocumented
features may/will fail or behave differently
Utilize Dynamic Management Views and Functions
e.g. syslocks  sys.dm_tran_locks
Undocumented objects are not supported, ever
My queries run longer – what now?
Review or
remove query
hints
Do full updated
statistics
Review TempDB
utilization
Queries take longer to run after
upgrading
Run DB Tuning
Advisor
Seek Customer
Support for
excessive issues
Consider rewrite
and evaluating
new functionality
Use different
sampling size for
large tables
Optimize via
storage isolation
Some Known Compatibility Issues
• Cannot access SQL Server after upgrade
“off-by-default” is in place for
features and access methods
Clients can no longer connect to
the database server or related
components
Check configuration
Surface Area Configuration
Manager removed
Pre-Upgrade Tasks: Outside Forces
• Database Solutions
• COM Components
• Extended Stored Procedures
• sp_OA%
• CLR assemblies
• Linked Servers
• Cross-database dependencies
• DTS packages
Pre-Upgrade Tasks: Outside Forces
• Some editions have a different feature set
• Example: Express does not have SQL Server Agent
• No substitute for knowing your application!
• Especially if supporting international versions
Post-Upgrade Tasks
• Immediate Tasks
• Decision whether to roll back
• Ensure performance
• Resource Planning
• Short-Term
• Medium-Term
• Long-Term
Immediate Post-Upgrade Tasks
• Review all logs
• Revisit Upgrade Advisor recommendations
• Update statistics to ensure performance
• Full if possible
• Sample for very large tables
• Reconfigure Log Shipping (if upgraded from 2000)
No direct upgrade path to Denali from SQL Server 2000
Immediate Post-Upgrade Tasks
• Re-populate Full-Text catalogs
• Verify Agent jobs and maintenance tasks
• Verify security settings
• Especially cross server and/or cross-domain access privileges
• Check database consistency
• DBCC CHECKDB
• DBCC UPDATEUSAGE (for 2000 upgrades)
Immediate Post Upgrade Tasks
• Configuration Manager
• Critical for Side-By-Side to reset environment, protocols, etc…
• Upgrade process “tries” to preserve functionality for In-Place
• Size and configure tempdb correctly
• DBCC CHECKDB, CTEs, Cursors, MARS, Row Versioning, Service
Broker, Triggers
• Verify MODEL database
• Verify MASTER database
• Perform unit / verification tests
• Commit upgrade or rollback!
Short-Term Post Upgrade Tasks
• Data Types
• Take advantage of new data types
• From 2000: NVARCHAR(MAX), VARCHAR(MAX), VARBINARY(MAX), XML
• From 2000/2005: Filestream, spatial, date, time, hierarchyID
• Even more new datatypes in SQL Server Codename “Denali”
• Persisted columns
• Index persisted columns
• Database options
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DB_CHAINING, EXECUTE AS
PAGE_VERIFY CHECKSUM
Evaluate AUTO_UPDATE_STATISTICS_ASYNC
Evaluate PARAMETERIZATION
Short-Term Post Upgrade Tasks
• Partitioned Tables
• Enterprise Edition
• Partitioned Views -> Partitioned Tables
• Appropriate lock escalation setting
• Database Files / Filegroups
• Performance Benefits
• sp_configure ‘affinity mask’
• sp_configure ‘affinity I/O mask’
• Management Benefits
• Reports, DMVs (including new and changed), etc.
• Database Tuning Advisor
Medium-Term Post-Upgrade Tasks
• Re-evaluate Optimizer Hints
• Remove or document reasons to retain
• Online operations
• Enterprise Edition
• Row Versioning
• Evaluate Read Committed Snapshot Isolation (RCSI)
• ALLOW_SNAPSHOT_ISOLATION
• READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT
Medium-Term Post-Upgrade Tasks
• Re-evaluate Indexed Views
• Definition of “determinism” has changed
• Custom aggregations
• Re-evaluate indexes
• Optimizer has changed
• Database Engine Tuning Advisor
• Re-evaluate statistics
• Sampling
• Automatic
• Manual
Longer-Term Post-Upgrade Tasks
• Re-write “COM components” as CLR
• XPs to C# or VB in CLR
• Custom CLR types in 2005
• E.g. date, time, spatial
• Deprecated Features
• xp_sendmail / SQL Mail
• Data types
Long-Term Post-Upgrade Tasks
• DTS Packages
• Especially if “upgrade” from 2000 to 2005 then 2008 without
re-write
• Security
• Schemas
• Different encryption options
• New audit capabilities
• There are many more!
• Especially for 2000 upgrades – see Books Online
Upgrading Mirrored Databases
to SQL Server 2008 R2
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•
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Rolling upgrades supported to minimize impact
Mirror version has to be equal or newer than Principal
At least one manual failover required; failback is usually performed but not required
(dependent on setup)
•
Ensure system can do both without issues prior to upgrade especially if using any SAN
replication technologies (e.g. SRDF, Business Copy, etc…)
• Consider temporarily disabling SAN replication but be aware of risks
•
Typical upgrade flow
•
Remove Witness (for HA configuration only)
• Witness can be upgraded anytime after removal
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•
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Switch to High Safety mode (if current mode is different)
Upgrade MIRROR instance, allow to rejoin Database Mirroring pair and synchronize
Failover to MIRROR and upgrade original PRINCIPAL, allow to rejoin as the new MIRROR
and synchronize
• Failback if appropriate
•
Re-establish witness and/or High Performance mode where applicable
Upgrading Replicated Databases
• Mixed versions are supported but
• Distributor version must always be equal or newer than Publisher
• Subscribers for transactional replication can be within 2 versions
newer/older of Publisher
• Subscribers for merge replication must be equal or older than Publisher
• Verify features supported by editions before upgrade, especially
for 2000 MSDE  2005 Express
• E.g. Merge in Express 2008 is subscriber only
• Process is similar to 20002005 upgrade
• 20002008R2 is supported
• Update agent security settings post upgrade to reflect new security model
(2008 and 2005 have same security model)
• Typical upgrade flow: Distributor, Publisher, Subscriber
Upgrading Log Shipped Databases
• Upgrade from 2000 to 2008R2 is not supported; migrate using same method as
20002005
• Monitor server instance can be updated anytime but monitoring is stopped
until completed – Log Shipping itself is not affected
• Secondary server must be upgraded first
• Instance is upgraded first but DB remains 2000/2005 because it is offline; upon
failover/recovery it automatically upgrades
• Logs are accumulated during upgrade and applied when done
• Primary can be upgraded with
• Less downtime – requires failover and re-establish Log Shipping after upgrade
• Less effort – no failover but system is unavailable during upgrade of primary
• Typical upgrade flow:
• Less downtime – upgrade secondary, failover, upgrade primary, establish Log
Shipping, failback, establish Log Shipping
• Less effort – upgrade secondary, allow catch-up, upgrade primary
Upgrading Analysis Services
• 20052008 R2 typically upgraded via 2008R2 setup
• 20002008 R2 upgrade via setup supported but sideby-side upgrade recommended using AS Migration
Wizard
• Migration Wizard requires DSO backwards compatibility
components which are not installed by default – remember to
select option during setup or add component before migration
• Typical upgrade flow
• setup: run 2008 R2 setup, select upgrade workflow, select
2000/2005 AS instance to upgrade
• migrate: install 2008 R2 AS, run AS Migration Wizard and
follow workflow
Upgrading Reporting Services
• Upgraded via 2008 R2 Setup
• Different patch level requirements from RDBMS
• RS2000: Service Pack 2 or later
• RS2005: RTM or later
• Manual upgrade for RS server using a remote SQL Server
2000 database
• RS2000 report server endpoint is no longer supported
• Reporting Services 2008 R2 uses native http.sys
• Typical upgrade workflow
• Run 2008R2 setup, select upgrade workflow for RS, select
report server instance to upgrade
Upgrading Integration Services (and DTS)
• DTS upgrade supported as side-by-side installation –
DTS has no dependency on SSIS
• Upgrade does not automatically migrate DTS packages to
SSIS format – run migration wizard
• Consider converting DTS source packages to native SSIS
• Conversion tool available from Microsoft partners such as
www.dtsxchange.com
Upgrading Log Shipping
Cannot upgrade Log Shipping 2000
Switchover to standby
Upgrade primary
Migrating
with
failover
Log Shipping in 2008 R2
does not use
DB Maintenance Plan
Wizard
Switchback
Upgrade standby
Re-establish Log Shipping
or other HA technology
Upgrade primary
Migrating
without
failover
Upgrade secondary
Re-establish Log Shipping
or other HA technology
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