Migrating to Configuration Manager 2007 : Conducting an In-place Upgrade (part 3) - Database Upgrade Tips and Tricks

5. Database Upgrade Tips and Tricks

Before upgrading an SMS 2003 primary site to Configuration Manager 2007, test the database upgrade to ensure there are no incompatibilities. To test the database upgrade, perform the following steps:

1.	Make a copy of your site database to use for the test upgrade. It is essential to test the upgrade with a copy of the database rather than the actual site database, because running the test upgrade against your production database could render the database incompatible with SMS 2003. You can copy the database using SQL Server Management Studio by right-clicking the site database and choosing Tasks -> Copy Database, as shown in Figure 10. This launches the Copy Database Wizard. The wizard is straightforward, and you can generally accept the default options. Note that the SQL Server Agent service must be running for the database copy to succeed. When the copy completes, you should record the size of the newly copied database files. You will need this information to estimate the space requirements for the database upgrade. Figure 10. Copying the SMS site database
2.	Test the database upgrade using the following syntax: setup /testdbupgrade <databasename> Run this from the smssetup\bin\<processor architecture> folder of the ConfigMgr installation media, where <databasename> is the name of your copied database and <processor architecture> is generally i386.
3.	At the Installation Prerequisite Check screen shown in Figure 11, click Begin TestDBUpgrade. Figure 11. Launching the database upgrade test
4.	When the test database upgrade completes, you should see a message that Configuration Manager was successfully upgraded. To verify there were no errors, review the log files c:\ConfigMgrPrereq.log and c:\ConfigMgrSetup.log. Resolve any problems indicated in the logs before upgrading your site to ConfigMgr 2007. You should also compare the size of the upgraded database files with the initial database size you recorded in step 1. This provides an estimate of the additional space required when you upgrade the database.

Before upgrading your database, export any custom objects you created outside of SMS. Any custom tables created in the SMS database, for example, are removed by the upgrade, although the upgrade preserves custom views based on the default SMS tables. You should also be prepared to re-create any customizations made to default SMS reports, because the upgrade process overwrites changes made to the default reports.

Any custom objects you have created within SMS, such as custom collections or cloned reports, are preserved through the upgrade.