sql 2005 32 bit to sql 2005 64 bit Cluster upgrade questions.

First off thanks for reading and lending a hand.

His my situation. We have a 2 node cluster both 2003 64bit OS but one of the nodes is SQL 2005 Ent edition 32 bit and the other node is SQL 2005 Ent edition 64bit edition.

My goal is to upgrade the 32 bit edition to be a 64 bit edition and I was wondering what would be the best way to go about this. My initial thoughts were to backup all the databases (system), detach the user databases. Uninstall sql server on the 32 bit node then do a reinstall of sql 2005 64 bit on that node. Reattach user database and add users and jobs. Apply sql 2005 sp2.

Has anyone done an upgrade like this or have a better way? I’m not sure my way would be the best way or if it would even work.


Thanks for your time.

You can try in place upgrade. Or install 64-bit instance first, move all dbs from 32-bit instance, then drop 32-bit ones. If like to do what you planed, you should backup all dbs (system's and user's).

Thanks!

So it's possible to do an inplace upgrade of sql 2005 32 bit to sql 2005 64 bit without any issues?

We do replication with over 150 nodes so we want to keep the same instance name going from 32bit --> 64 bit. If we dont it will be a nightmare.

Build a test machine and test in place upgrade. You'll need reconfigure replications otherwise.

I'm starting that process now. I think I will have to build a virtual cluster to mimic the prod servers and do the upgrade there.

You can just test it on single machine, makes no difference from cluster.