VM /ETC

My recent post Why not VirtualCenter with SQL 2005 Express? explored the possible reasons for and against small and medium businesses (SMB) using the default, free database with VirtualCenter. But what happens if your virtual infrastructure implementation grows beyond 5 hosts and 50 virtual machines (VM), or what if you are close to the SQL 2005 Express database size limit of 4 GB? When it’s time to upgrade to a licensed version of SQL 2005 you can upgrade your VirtualCenter SQL 2005 Express database instance in place.

What happens when I outgrow SQL Express for Virtual Center? is a post from the VMGuy Blog by Dave Lawrence that provides the simple instructions to perform the upgrade in place. Read dave’s entire post, but here is a cut and paste of the VMGuy’s recommended upgrade steps.

1. Take a backup of the VC server.  If you have VC running as a Virtual Machine, it’s best to take a snapshot of it so that you have a nice clean restore point in case anything goes wrong.
2. Shutdown any VMware services that may be using the SQL Express database.  For instance, the License service, VC service, or Update Manager.
3. Start the SQL Installer with an argument of SKUUPGRADE=1 (e.g. setup.exe SKUUPGRADE=1) for more information about using this command argument, have a look here .
4. When you reach the point where the installer asks if you wish to upgrade the default instance or a named instance, select named instance. Then browse to the instance named “SQLEXP_VIM” Then you can just accept the defaults for the installation.

Another option would be to move your VirtualCenter database to a SQL server. If you decide to relocate your database then check out VMware’s KB article 7960893 which is a reference for Microsoft’s http://support.microsoft.com/kb/274463.

How to move databases between computers that are running SQL Server is another Microsoft KB article to reference at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314546.

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