Move SQL-Server Database with zero downtime
zero downtime no. but with careful planning you can get away with close to zero down time.
Option 1:
- setup log shipping btwn existing 2005 and new 2008 server.
- Plan the cut-over carefully switching ip's and/or hostnames.
- Make sure you do a final tail log backup before final cut-over.
Option 2 (more work, less downtime):
- If your 2008 box is new, then install 2005 first to the same sp as your prod box.
- Setup database mirroring, asynch in first stage to avoid performance overhead.
- Setup your clients to have the failover partner included in the connection string
- Change to synch db mirroring and failover to new box
- follow 'rolling upgrade steps' for an inplace upgrade of 2005-2008 for a database mirroring setup
Of course, to get this right, your going to need to test & make sure you haven't missed anything when you do it for real :)
No. Sorry. I do not see a way to move the database without any downtime. What is on the database that you have no way to even put in an hour during like easter holidays?
A very convoluted way to do this... (almost)
- P2V the server onto a vmware cluster. No downtime.
- Create a second server and create an active/passive cluster.
- Upgrade the passive node to 2008 and fail over.
- Profit?
Obviously, everything here needs testing, there are many detailed steps left out.
OR - Get management to agree to downtime, and publicise it advance to your customers. Then practice and test the upgrade to death!
Explain to management the technical difficulties in trying to do this "cheap". This is something you BUILD INTO a system when you first build the architecture of a full 27x7.
Even the biggest systems have planned downtime. It's UNPLANNED downtime that you need to worry about more.