1. Upgrade your Databasewith only 15 Minutes of Downtime. Chris Shaw (Chris@SQLShaw.com)

2. The Case

3. Critical updates, could impact public safety. No more than 15 minutes of downtime. 3 databases 2 were updated on a regular basis 1 was updated once a week Total size was 300 GB Using SQL Litespeed for compression Database Maintenance was limited to backups (No Re-indexing to speak of) Outages are extremely hard to come by. Full Backups taken every Sunday, Diffs taken every night, T-Logs every 20 min.

4. Migration to SQL 2008 in a Mission Critical Environment

6. About 888

7. Upgrade Methodology

8. Upgrade Tools

9. Upgrade Process

11. About 888

12. Upgrade Methodology

13. Upgrade Tools

14. Upgrade Process

16. Our purpose is to provide quality entertainment for people who enjoy gambling.

18. 888 Database Environment

20. Maintenance

21. Backups

22. Indexes

23. Statistics

24. Data retention

25. Monitoring

26. Performance Tuning

27. Version Uploads

29. 300 development and QA instances were upgraded

30. All SQL server hosts upgraded windows 2008 R2 OS

31. Cut licensing costs by more than $500,000

32. Reduce load from IO subsystems by using SQL server compression

35. About 888

36. Upgrade Methodology

37. Upgrade Tools

38. Upgrade Process

40. No connection string changes

41. No need to copy system objects – system DBs are upgraded

44. A quick rollback

48. Jobs

49. Configurations

50. Logins and Credentials

52. Copy system databases across different versions of SQL servers System DBs System DBs

54. Change connection strings

55. Start application 𝑋 (𝑁𝑢𝑚 𝑜𝑓 𝐴𝑝𝑝𝑠) 𝑋 (𝑁𝑢𝑚 𝑂𝑓 𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑠)

56. Downtime Timeline Downtime ends Downtime starts Conn stringchanges DBs RW2008 DBsRO2000/2005 Backup log Stop allapps Start all apps Restore log Q: Can we do it in one step and faster?

58. IP

59. Port

60. Service Name

61. Connection Examples:

62. hostnameNST1

63. Virtual-nameNST1 (in clusters)

64. Virtual-name, port

65. IP, port Q: What can I change?

67. 10.10.10.193

69. 10.10.10.198

72. Move LUNs

73. Clone LUNs

74. Database Level

75. Database Mirroring

76. Log shipping - Works at the database level

78. About 888

79. Upgrade Methodology

80. Upgrade Tools

81. Upgrade Process

83. Slipstream Means to integrate packages of updates, patches or service-packs into one installation pack. Robocopy

85. Less restarts & less failovers

87. Installation Challenge #2 Installation Duration SQL 2008 Full Installation

88. Silent Installation Installation that does not display messages or windows during its progress

90. Saves time

91. Install many instances with one script

93. Installation Challenge #2 Installation Duration SQL 2008 SP1 CU6 SQL 2008 SP1 CU6

94. Copy User Databases Microsoft Log Shipping Works at the database level 888 AutoRestore Works at the instance level

95. In-House Tool – Autorestore

97. Uses transaction log backups from the source servers

98. Supports parallel restore operations

100. About 888

101. Upgrade Methodology

102. Upgrade Tools

103. Upgrade Process

105. Install a new instance on a new cluster

106. Perform a failover

107. Network – check open ports

109. Pre-Migration Preparation Stage Copy user databases using instance level log shipping (Auto-Restore) Windows 2003 Windows 2008 Auto-Restore Instance 2000005 Instance 2008

111. System health checks – OS ,Storage, Host, Network

112. Migration Process (scripts, time)

114. Actual Migration On 2008 Instance 4. Restore last logs with no recovery 5. Check if all the logs were restored from the old server 6. Restore with recovery for all databases 7. Set all databases to read-write 8. Fix orphan logins 9. Change compatibility to 100

115. Actual Migration Changing Instance Identification 10. Take offline the old instance group Take offline the new instance group Delete the old and the new virtual IP and name DNS records from the DNS server

116. Actual Migration Changing Instance Identification Clear the DNS server’s cache Give the new server the old server’s virtual IP & name 15. Flush DNS cache clients of new server, Arpcache 16. Start the new instance group

117. Post-Migration Perform Sanity Checks Check NOC Alerts 3. Check SSIS, MSDTC and Job statuses 4. Run a Profiler’s Error Trace 5. Check SQL Error Log & Event Log 6. Check Performance Baseline 7. Run Full Backups

120. About 888

121. Upgrade Methodology

122. Upgrade Tools

123. Upgrade Process