Home / server / Questions / 66818
Accepted
Agent
Asked: 2009-09-19 11:47:31 +0800 CST

Need to move all MOSS DBs to named instance

  • 772

I've been asked to move all of our SP related DBs to a new named instance on the same SQL 2005 server. I've done a content DB move before by disconnecting the content db then reconentcing to it with the new location, but I'm a bit lost on what process to follow for the SSPs, mysites, and config. From what I can tell, the general consesus is that I should create a brand new config DB and SSP and migrate the content DB over. Is this the only clean option? My biggest concern is that it took me a while to get profile imports working due to a multitude of reasons, I'd hate to go through that again.

We have 2 WFEs, 1 search/index server, and a shared clustered SQL 2005 DB on the backend.

sharepoint

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Agent,

    Generally speaking, pointing a new database instance (or instances) is a "deal breaker" when it comes to the farm. My "fallback safe opinion" tracks with the general consensus: construct a new farm (i.e., a new configuration database), build out your SSP, and then perform content database migrations into the new farm.

    Here's a tip on avoiding this (painful) process in the future: implement SQL connection aliases. An article describing how to do this can be found here: http://decipherinfosys.wordpress.com/2007/11/26/using-a-server-alias-to-connect-to-sql-server-instances/. Aliases are also particularly helpful from a disaster recovery perspective, as they introduce a layer of abstraction between your farm and the supporting data layer.

    I haven't tried this next item, so I mention it strictly as an investigative point ... but you might be able to implement aliases in your MOSS environment now before you do a rebuild and potentially avoid it altogether. Let's say your SQL Server is named "SQLSERVER" and you'll be going to a named instance on that server called "MOSS". For each MOSS server:

    1. Install SQL Client Tools
    2. Establish an alias named "SQLSERVER" that points to the server "SQLSERVER"
    3. Build out your named instance (SQLSERVER\MOSS) and copy over all databases for the farm to the new named instance
    4. Switch the "SQLSERVER" alias on each MOSS server to point to "SQLSERVER\MOSS" instead of "SQLSERVER" and see what happens.

    At worst, this will fail and you'll have to build out a new farm as you're expecting to do now. At best ... you'll continue to run without a farm rebuild.

    I hope this helps!

    • 5

  2. I have detailed steps in a blog post on how to go about moving databases to a new database server using SQL connection aliases and I would imagine it would be of use in this scenario. Feel free to check it out at http://mossblogger.blogspot.com/2009/10/migrating-to-new-sql-server-in-moss.html and let me know if it is of any use to you.

    Cheers, Benjamin Athawes.

    • 0