Ultimate guide to upgrading to SQL Server 2008

denny.lee — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 03:57:00 GMT

For the ultimate guide to upgrading to SQL Server 2008, please refer to the SQL Server 2008 Upgrade Technical Reference Guide.

A successful upgrade to SQL Server 2008 should be smooth and trouble-free. To achieve that smooth transition, you must devote plan sufficiently for the upgrade, and match the complexity of your database application. Otherwise, you risk costly and stressful errors and upgrade problems. Like all IT projects, planning for every contingency and then testing your plan gives you confidence that you will succeed. But if you ignore the planning process, you increase the chances of running into difficulties that can derail and delay your upgrade. This document covers the essential phases and steps involved in upgrading existing SQL Server 2000 and 2005 instances to SQL Server 2008 by using best practices. These include preparation tasks, upgrade tasks, and post-upgrade tasks.

Chapter 1 gives an overview of the technical issues and decisions that are involved in an upgrade to SQL Server 2008, as well as recommendations for planning and deploying an upgrade.
Chapter 2 addresses issues related to upgrading to SQL Server 2008 Management Tools.
Chapters 3 through 8 focus on upgrade issues for SQL Server relational databases.
Chapter 9 addresses upgrading to SQL Server 2008 Express.
Chapters 10 through 14 focus on upgrading to SQL Server 2008 Business Intelligence components: Analysis Services, Data Mining, Integration Services, and Reporting Services.
Chapter 15 addresses the implications of upgrading to SQL Server 2008 for other Microsoft applications and platforms.
Appendix 1 contains a table of allowed SQL Server 2008 version and edition upgrade paths.
Appendix 2 contains an upgrade planning checklist.

New Best Practices Articles Published - Running Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services on Windows Server 2008 vs. Windows Server 2003 and Memory Preallocation: Lessons Learned

carl.rabeler — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:49:00 GMT

Due to the improvements in the Windows Server 2008 memory manager related to the change in the algorithm for scanning pages in memory, SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services performed equally well during both partition and dimension processing with or without memory preallocation when running on Windows Server 2008. However, SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services performed substantially better during both partition and dimension processing with the use of the memory preallocation configuration setting when running on Windows Server 2003. Specifically, the processing performance of Analysis Services 2008 without memory preallocation on Windows Server 2008 was virtually identical to the processing performance of Analysis Services 2008 on Windows Server 2003 with memory preallocation. With the hardware that we used in our tests and with the Analysis Services objects that we processed, we observed a performance benefit of approximately 100% during partition processing and a performance benefit of between 30-40% during dimension processing.

If you use memory preallocation with SQL Server 2008 (or SQL Server 2005), use a value that is low enough to ensure that sufficient memory remains for other processes on the computer (avoiding paging) and high enough for Analysis Services (use the peak value for the Process: Private Bytes counter for the msmdsrv instance to establish this value).

Note: While we did not specifically test SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services for this technical note, the results discussed here apply to Analysis Services 2005 as well as to Analysis Services 2008 because the underlying code base for the portion of Analysis Services 2008 that we tested has not changed.

http://sqlcat.com/technicalnotes/archive/2008/07/16/running-microsoft-sql-server-2008-analysis-services-on-windows-server-2008-vs-windows-server-2003-and-memory-preallocation-lessons-learned.aspx

Microsoft SQL Server Development Customer Advisory Team : SQL Server Analysis Service

Ultimate guide to upgrading to SQL Server 2008

New Best Practices Articles Published - Running Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services on Windows Server 2008 vs. Windows Server 2003 and Memory Preallocation: Lessons Learned