SQL Server Upgrades

UniverSQL's SQL Server Upgrade services provide your business with a comprehensive assessment of the risks and benefits involved in performing an in-line vs side-by-side SQL Server upgrades, information on upgrade paths from legacy SQL Server releases leading to a complete end-to-end SQL Server upgrade implementation.

Due to SQL Server's inherent complexity and compounded by the various architectual differences moving between SQL 2000, SQL 2005 and SQL 2008, the process of performing SQL Server Upgrades can easily become quite a risky undertaking if not planned correctly, potentially even resulting in unusable databases and broken applications. As such, Upgrades of SQL Server often do not lend themselves to a generic methodologies which provide fool proof guidelines to protect the end user against such upgrade failures.

UniverSQL adopts a number of approaches (depending upon the circumstances) in order to mitigate the risk of performing a SQL Server Upgrade and consequently reduce any potential negative impact on the business. These approaches will typically take on the following structure;

SQL Server 2005 / 2008 Rediness Check
Consultation with key business constituents in order to ascertain requirements and deadlines
Consultation with developer to ensure application support of the new SQL Server environment.
Setup and Configuration of test environments
SQL Server Upgrade process documentation and test plan
Development and documentation of recovery / roll back strategy
Implementation of agreed solution into production environment
Assessment of ongoing maintenance requirements
Overall project management of SQL Server upgrade

Known Issues:

SQL Server 2008 upgrade can fail if you have renamed the sa account.