Ease of SIMS migration to SQL 2005

[Ric_]

I need to get this sorted before Christmas. The current situation is:

* Windows Server 2000

* SQL Server 2000

* SIMS with August Release applied

 

I need to get it to:

* Windows Server 2003

* SQL Server 2005

* SIMS migrated and fully patched

 

My question is for those who have done this... is it worth paying £140 to have this done for me (bearing in mind that I would have to schedule downtime during working hours)? From reading the Capita instructions, the SIMS bit seems quite straight forward and an in-place upgrade of Server should be OK too.

[jcollings]

I did ours SQL 2000 to SQL 2005 + SIMS transfer & upgrade. It all went very smoothly with only 1 minor issue with the connect.ini

 

Whole process took about 4 hours and I did it remotely from home so I could do it out of hours.

 

I guess the only benefit of using Capita's managed service is if it does go wrong (and I have read lots of cases where it has) then it becomes Capita's problem to sort. If you do the upgrade and it goes wrong Capita will charge to sort out any data corruption issues.

[Ric_]

Something else... would now be a good time to move to new hardware too?

 

The existing box is a dual 2.4GHz Xeon with 1GB or RAM (stop laughing!) but it will probably do the job for a little longer... all be it slowly/

[Ric_]

@jcollings: Our SIMS support is through the County support team... I was told that they would charge the £140 to do it from scratch if it went wrong. They also told me that I would receive NO telephone support for the upgrade because they are advising schools that they pay to have the upgrade done for them (something that I think is out of order but that's a different story).

[lindsayecroft]

I did ours SQL 2000 to SQL 2005 + SIMS transfer & upgrade during October half term. Mine too went very smoothly apart from connect.ini problem and it only took me a morning to do. I wouldn't have paid our LEA to do it.

 

There is also a lot of help now on the Capita website.

[jcollings]

@ric - I think their whole attitude to this has been poor if I'm honest. I have heard of more issues moving server than just doing the upgrade. A colleague yesterday was saying how they have moved the DB to another server and it just wouldn't reattach.

 

As someone once said "Do ya feel lucky? Well do ya punk?"

 

Russian roulette SIMS style.

[ChrisH]

Westfield did ours yesterday and it went fine. I would rather pay £140 and let them do it since they have done plenty of others and know the procedure.

[bossman]

Updated Sims to latest version, migrated and converted database from SQL2000 after backing up the server via tape, directories and Acronis (universal restore). Wiped the server (win2000) and installed fresh Windows 2003R2, set up partitions, installed SQL 2005 enterprise and reattached the database renaming as required then reinstalling a fresh sims.net with new doc server. Then reset all permisions on the server share and imported any documents into their retrospective directories. Approx 5 hours all told.

 

Runs a little slower than it used to but only by a couple of secs looking at using the enterprise tools to speed things up.

[Domino]

The migration is fine, as is the install.

 

We moved servers at the same time (i would advise it), and that was the hardest part. but I've previously posted links to very detailed instructions on how to do that.

 

All in all, if you've a half term to do it in, and you've a full server backup- do it yourself

[laserblazer]

I've just started. Got to the bit where it says locate and run SIMSSQL2005.exe and the file doesn't exist! I'm sure everything up to there was done as per. but I took over from someone else.

[enjay]

I've just started. Got to the bit where it says locate and run SIMSSQL2005.exe and the file doesn't exist! I'm sure everything up to there was done as per. but I took over from someone else.

 

It should be in S:\SIMS\setups, but not until after you've run SQL2005Installation.exe (or some similarly-named file). If you don't have the latter, then run SOLUS, ticking the "CCS Installation Upgrade" box.

 

The undocumented problem I hit was that you can't do this from a mapped drive - for convenience, I have S: on our server mapped to the SIMS folder on the same server, and it crashed the install when I did that. For some reason, you have to run the upgrades from their true location.

[laserblazer]

Thanks, running Solus was the answer. No mention of that on the installation instructions

[enjay]

Thanks, running Solus was the answer. No mention of that on the installation instructions

 

Good, isn't it?! I had to phone Capita support to get told both those little nuggets. Their documentation truly is rubbish.