I have a particularily annoying upgrade that I'm forced to do on two of
our test servers. One in particular has our MSSQL test databases on
it... The OS is currently Windows 2000 Professional with 3 instances
of MSSQL running on it (3 databases).

We are upgrading all test servers to Windows Server 2003 Standard
and I cannot just upgrade the OS, I'm forced to do a clean install.

My current plan is to boot from the Server 2003 CD and install the OS
in place over the existing OS. If I just re-install MSSQL into the existing
directory and setup the databases with correct names, will the new
MSSQL install pickup the existing data?

Plan B is to do a Database "move" to another machine, upgrade the OS,
and then do a "move-back" to complete the upgrade.

Is plan A impossible? Is plan B better? Is there some other way to do
it that I just don't see right now? Thanks in advance.

-Jay

Don´t know how important the data is to you, but I would prefer option C, to
backup and restore the database files, to keep the databases consistent.
Another way woud be to detach and attach the DBs, but as long as that is not
the prefered and recommended way to backup or move data on a productional
system, I would prefer the Backup and Restore action.

--
HTH, Jens Suessmeyer.

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"input/output" <io|at|thefragile|dot|com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
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It is a test database, we have backups from a couple days ago.

How is this different from B?

This sounds like the solution that would use the smallest amount of time.
Is there a good step-by-step guide for how to do it? (Sorry if I'm a bit
clueless, this isn't normally my area of expertise).

--
Jay [ i/o]

For more information on sp_attach_db, please visit
http://msdn.microsoft.com/libr*ary/d...ry/e*n-us/tsql...
sp_ae-az_52oy.asp

Or raise a hand if you can´t get through.

--
HTH, Jens Suessmeyer.

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http://www.sqlserver2005.de
---
"input/output" <io|at|thefragile|dot|com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:11abbhoamk3oe25 (AT) corp (DOT) supernews.com...

So, I detached all of the releveant databases and
installed the new OS (Windows Server 2003). After
re-installing MS SQL Server (and patching it to SP3a,
which it told me I had to do) I did the attach and
the servers were back online. It worked like a charm.

Thanks for the advice.

-Jay