This may be a stupid question but I couldn't get a definitive answer from MS
literature. We've pretty much made the decision to move from SQL 2005 Std to
SQL 2008 Ent. We want to move our production server to 2008 immediately using
the trial software with the plan of purchasing the software within the trial
180 days. The literature says we can purchase the license at any time during
that time period. My question that isn't answered yet is when we buy the
license will we be able to just plug the code into the existing trial install
to make it fully licensed or will we have to do an uninstall/reinstall? It's
important we be able to do the install now without down time later.
Production is in a virtual server so we'll have a pristine copy of the vm to
restore if things go sideways. TIA.
--
Tim

Gunnertac (Gunnertac (AT) discussions (DOT) microsoft.com) writes:
What you will have to do is an Edition upgrade. So you will run Setup
again. Exactly how much downtime, if any, that incurs, I don't know.

By the way, note that there is no upgrade path from SQL 2005 standarad
to SQL 2008 Evaluation, at least not documented in Books Online. But I
assume that the plan is not to ugprade the 2005 instance, but move the
databases to a new machine.


--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel (AT) sommarskog (DOT) se

Links for SQL Server Books Online:
SQL 2008: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/cc514207.aspx
SQL 2005: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/bb895970.aspx
SQL 2000: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/prodinf...ons/books.mspx