RAID Levels can also be something to consider during this time. Kendal Van Dyke has an excellent series on Disk Performance that can be useful when looking at RAID levels. While you will often read that RAID 10 gives you the best bang, you may not have any buck left. Generally, it’s recommended that you stick with RAID 5 for your data files and RAID 1 for your log files. If you are not connected to a SAN and your drives are local then now is the time to get the RAID levels right.

Once you have your OS installed, its time to get it configured so that it works optimally for SQL Server. There are several key fundamentals about SQL Server installations that you will need to understand as you move forward and there are great resources from Brent Ozar and Chad Boyd included in the resource links below. Another item that Brent touches on briefly is that of Disk Partition Alignment. Jimmy May has some excellent information on that, and the SQL CAT team recently published a new whitepaper that is helpful.

Resources:
SQL Server 2005 on a 64-bit Platform
32-bit vs. the 64-bit SQL Server performance surge
Q&A: Making the jump to 64-bit SQL Server 2005
Disk Performance Hands On
SQL Server Setup Checklist – Part 1
Installing Clustered SQL Servers – Outline, Checklists, Document Sheets
Disk Partition Alignment (Sector Alignment) for SQL Server: Part 1: Slide Deck
Disk Partition Alignment Best Practices for SQL Server

In the best of scenarios, you can find another server that you can use to do testing and simulate what the environment will look like.  If you cannot find another server that can be used solely for this purpose, maybe you could look at using virtualization to meet this need.  You probably will not be able to simulate the hardware completely, but it should be better than nothing. Setting up a virtual instance is beyond the scope of this article but it should be fairly easy to set that up with resources found online. VMware and Microsoft both have virtualization software that can be used for free.

Scalability Experts has a tool called SQL Server Upgrade Assistant 2005 that can be used to verify how your applications will run against SQL Server 2005 instead of 2000. Even if you do not use this tool, by reading through the User Guide you can develop your own plan for testing and that should help you discover the items you need to address.

In the fourth part of this series, I’ll describe some things you should consider as you are setting up your new server.

One of the first stops for anyone interested in upgrading should be reading the following papers from Microsoft:
SQL Server 2005 Upgrade Handbook
SQL Server 2005 Upgrade Technical Reference Guide

After you’ve digested nearly 400 pages of information you should at least have a grasp on the initial concepts of what you are about to undertake and possibly even have a rough idea of what your game plan will be.  The biggest positive is that we can learn from all of those who have gone before us since we aren’t exactly breaking new ground. SQL Server 2008 has even been out for some time now, and hopefully you have investigated whether or not you should bypass SQL Server 2005. A few resources on that can be found at:

http://blog.scalabilityexperts.com/2008/01/28/upgrade-sql-server-2000-to-2005-or-2008/

http://searchsqlserver.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid87_gci1325303,00.html

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administration/3094/
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/denis_gobo/archive/2008/07/09/7753.aspx

In our case, the decision to make a slow move towards SQL Server 2005 was made based on a previous purchase of the software coupled with the later knowledge of the amount of resources required to redo what we had already begun.

Once you’ve decided to go forward with your upgrade it would be wise to download the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Upgrade Advisor. This product will tell you what issues you could possibly run into. It’s not going to cover everything that could possibly trip you up, but it’s a good starting point in educating yourself on what you have and where you are going.

You may also find that it would be beneficial to run the Microsoft SQL Server Best Practices Analyzer to look for any other issues that may be there if you have an inherited system. You may find that it’s a good time to do a little bit of cleanup before you upgrade and there’s no time like the present. I’ve found this tool useful in tracking down issues such  as stored procedures with a sp_ prefix, usage of Select *, and objects calling deprecated built in functions.

In Summary, I think that it would be wise to use this planning time to clean up issues with the current SQL 2000 instance before you move forward if you have the opportunity. While some of the issues you’ll find won’t prevent you from going forward, it seems that while you have your sleeves rolled up and you’re inside the system a little cleanup would reduce future maintenance issues. Of course, if your situation is anything like mine you will run into issues that just have to wait because there’s no way that modifications can be made in a timely manner without sidetracking the upgrade.

It goes without saying that the biggest reason for upgrading is that the product is basically End of Life. While you can still get extended support through 2013 it would still be wise to start the process of moving forward. There are plenty of resources on the internet about the new features that were introduced or approved upon with SQL Server 2005. Since I am more of an administrator I get a little more warm and fuzzy about Table and Index Partitioning, All Permissions Grantable, Mirroring, Snapshots, Online Restores, and Performance DMV’s.  While the new data types can be very useful and I’m sure CLR has its place it is hard for me to get as excited about those items. A full list of features can be found by digging through Microsoft’s full list or an abbreviated Top 30.

For us, SQL Server Integration Services this was one of the biggest hurdles to overcome because of the number of DTS packages that we are dependent upon. Microsoft has completely redone the way that data is moved from the ground up and there is a learning curve. We eventually decided to purchase a few licenses of a third-party piece of software to help with the package transition.

There’s also no more Enterprise Manager, and for the most part that’s a good thing. Visually, it’s much more appealing and it’s worth running a client to access SQL 2000 instances to do most things. This late in the game I’ve even been running a SQL 2008 client because of the added features that it gives me as an administrator.

Coming in part 2, Upgrade Education and Fact Finding.

Resources:

Landing page for SQL Server 2005
Microsoft whitepaper on “Why Upgrade to SQL Server 2005”
FAQ: Why Upgrade to SQL Server 2005 now
What’s new in SQL Server 2005
SQL 2005 Books Online : What’s New
Top 10 new features in SQL Server 2005
Consider what’s new in Microsoft SQL Server 2005
New T-SQL Features in SQL Server 2005 Part 1
New T-SQL Features in SQL Server 2005 Part 2
The Differences Between SQL Server 2000 and 2005
The Differences Between SQL Server 2000 and 2005 – Part 2

For those of us that are still in situations where we deal primarily with SQL Server 2000, there should come a time when we have to run the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Upgrade Advisor. Some of you may be going straight to SQL Server 2008 and this issue may be resolved in the SQL Server 2008 Upgrade Advisor.

During the initial run of the wizard, an error will pop up without giving you many details. In my case, I look at the event viewer and see the following:

.Net 2 Runtime Error

If you browse the internet you’ll find various ideas to fix it. Some suggest removing all .Net versions and reinstalling them. Some suggest not putting on .Net 2 SP1 until you run it. Another suggestion is to change the Aspnet.config file to read <legacyUnhandledExceptionPolicy enabled=”true” />. None of these suggestions worked for me.

The fix that got me working was to copy all of the files from within the \BPA\Bin folder and paste them into \BPA\.

I think I would try this first before going through all that other trouble. If this doesn’t work you can always explore the other options.

Resources:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/sqlsetupandupgrade/thread/2a5f460b-8684-4510-8fcb-1e9d9786baff/
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqlsetupandupgrade/thread/390e8a17-bd66-4426-b24c-d0a5cc009053
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic561810-5-1.aspx
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/911816
http://sqllearnings.blogspot.com/2009/04/microsoft-sql-server-2005-upgrade.html
http://devel.virtage.com/2009/01/en-crashing-sql-server-2005-upgrade-advisor-error/

The problem arises when I have to deal with a .iso file. I needed a way to get the contents out of the iso and into a folder that I could use for a network install. After a small amount of searching I found that I had a few options. The option from Microsoft (Virtual CD Rom) didn’t play nice with the server permissions. I finally got ISOBuster to work for my needs.

Once I extracted the .iso file to a folder for each of the cd/dvds then it was a very easy process. I’m sure there are multiple ways to do this, but given my situation of being remote and only having the .iso files the solution I found seemed to do the trick.

I ran into a machine today that had the tempdb files in the wrong location. They were also the wrong size and there were not enough of them.

So that presents three problems that had to be solved. The first problem I decided to fix was to get rid of the current files that were sized inappropriately and in the wrong location. No need to double my work.

I’m sure it can just as easily be done by script, but I went into the GUI and deleted each tempdb data file that I didn’t want anymore for the time being. You will get an error message about deleting the file and restarting SQL Server. Once you’ve done that you are left with only one data file and one temp file, even though they may be in the wrong location and the wrong size.

Let’s go ahead and tackle the size issue first. After we’ve just restarted SQL Server lets do something like this:

dbcc shrinkfile (‘tempdev’,1024,TRUNCATEONLY)

Now it’s time to go ahead and move the files to the place we want them:

USE master
GO
ALTER DATABASE tempdb
MODIFY FILE (NAME = tempdev, FILENAME = ‘I:\tempdb.mdf’)
GO
ALTER DATABASE tempdb
MODIFY FILE (NAME = templog, FILENAME = ‘I:\templog.ldf’)
GO

Now it’s time to add the additional tempdb data files:
USE [master]
GO
ALTER DATABASE [tempdb] ADD FILE ( NAME = N’tempdev2′,
FILENAME = N’I:\tempdb2.ndf’ , SIZE = 1048576KB , FILEGROWTH = 204800KB )
GO
ALTER DATABASE [tempdb] ADD FILE ( NAME = N’tempdev3′,
FILENAME = N’I:\tempdb3.ndf’ , SIZE = 1048576KB , FILEGROWTH = 204800KB )
GO
ALTER DATABASE [tempdb] ADD FILE ( NAME = N’tempdev4′,
FILENAME = N’I:\tempdb4.ndf’ , SIZE = 1048576KB , FILEGROWTH = 204800KB )
GO
ALTER DATABASE [tempdb] ADD FILE ( NAME = N’tempdev5′,
FILENAME = N’I:\tempdb5.ndf’ , SIZE = 1048576KB , FILEGROWTH = 204800KB )
GO
ALTER DATABASE [tempdb] ADD FILE ( NAME = N’tempdev6′,
FILENAME = N’I:\tempdb6.ndf’ , SIZE = 1048576KB , FILEGROWTH = 204800KB )
GO
ALTER DATABASE [tempdb] ADD FILE ( NAME = N’tempdev7′,
FILENAME = N’I:\tempdb7.ndf’ , SIZE = 1048576KB , FILEGROWTH = 204800KB )
GO
ALTER DATABASE [tempdb] ADD FILE ( NAME = N’tempdev8′,
FILENAME = N’I:\tempdb8.ndf’ , SIZE = 1048576KB , FILEGROWTH = 204800KB )
GO

This will create 8 files (for our # of processors) that are 1024MB in size and autogrow at 200MB. At this point it probably wouldn’t hurt to restart the SQL Server. We had a few small issues but I’m not sure they were related.

The links that helped me with this are as follows:
http://www.sqlteam.com/article/moving-the-tempdb-database
http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/tarad/archive/2008/05/20/60604.aspx
http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/tarad/archive/2008/08/05/How-to-get-physical-CPU-count-on-a-server.aspx
http://sql-server-performance.com/Community/forums/p/23813/135241.aspx
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/328551

SQL Server 2008
If you aren’t working with a certain SQL Server version at your workplace then I would think that going with SQL Server 2008 would be your best option. It’s the latest and greatest and you will give yourself the most shelf-life for your effort. SQL Server 2008 was released in August of 2008 and you can see a build list here. One negative I noticed is that some of the books (MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-432): Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Implementation and Maintenance (PRO-Certification) are still being finalized for this version at the time of this writing. At the bare minimum, I would recommend becoming familiar with this version and go grab the Express Edition.

SQL Server 2005
You still may want to look at this version first if you are breaking into the field. There are tons of resources for SQL Server 2005 and you can focus on laying the ground work for a successful base to your knowledge. SQL Server 2008 does have new features, but I am not sure they are make or break for the beginner DBA. Personally, I have only gone as far as touching SQL Server 2005 and 2000. I am in the process of beginning to test SQL Server 2008, but since it’s not deployed in my work environment I feel that I gain more by focusing on maintaining and upgrading from 2000 to 2005. The amount of resources available to someone starting out with 2005 will be far greater than 2008 at the time of this writing, but there are many variables to add up when making your decision and I can’t account for all of them. One negative aspect that I saw last night would be finding a development version of SQL Server 2005 to start your test lab with. Amazon did not have any copies in stock so you would have to find a reseller if you wanted to use more advanced features that weren’t available in the Express Edition. SQL Server 2005 is up to SP3 so you are past the initial growing pains that come with a product without a service pack. You can grab the Express Edition here.

SQL Server 2000
Support for this product is only available through extended support. If you are currently in a shop that primarily uses SQL Server 2000 then you first step should be learning how to help maintain what is already there. If you are going to be working with a product then it does not make sense to me to only prepare for the future. This is the situation that I inherited so I can speak more clearly on it than the others. When this package fell into my lap we were only using SQL Server 2000. Even though the product life cycle is basically expired, the product still has to be managed by someone. Given the current economy, there’s a pretty good chance that budgets are frozen and upgrades to SQL Server 2005 may not be possible. This does not mean you should not prepare for the future, but it does mean you better become an expert on what your shop is using right now if you want to be the “go-to-guy” where you are at. There are tons of resources out there for SQL Server 2000, and that has helped me a great deal when it came to becomming the person who wants to answer the questions. If your shop is currently using SQL Server 2000 then you should have access to the necessary materials to build a good test lab to begin the learning process. I made the choice to go ahead and go with the 2005 certification track since that is the direction we are going, but I still needed to know how to do the same things in 2000. Having a certification of MCITP Database Administrator in SQL Server 2005 helps give those around me the confidence that I am able to facilitate an upgrade from SQL Server 2000 to 2005.

Summary
The SQL Server version you choose to go with definitely depends on variables that only you know. Whether or not you actually get to touch the SQL Servers at your workplace also play a huge role in what kind of decision you make. I would still download an Express Edition copy of 2005 and 2008 in order to get your feet wet, but you have to focus on what you feel will give you the edge where you work or where you would like to work. It all goes back to establishing what your goal is and then taking action to make it happen. If you want to become a SQL DBA where you work then you have to know if there’s even a possibility of that happening before you expend too much energy going down that path. Pick a target and set some goals to try and hit it. If you never set them then you’ll miss it every time. And by all means, if you want different results then you have to change what you are doing.