Migrate Local BES Database to another Server running SQL 2005

Usage and Config Platform
1

(imported topic written by gcibirch91)

Hi,

What is the best way to migrate the database from the local server to a server running SQL 2005 Server? We envisage that our database will grow beyoond the limits of SQL Express.

Thanks

2

(imported comment written by BenKus)

Try this:

http://support.bigfix.com/cgi-bin/kbdirect.pl?id=133

Ben

3

(imported comment written by gcibirch91)

Hi thanks for this.

However this seems to be for moving the complete BigFix system from one computer to another. I just want to upgrade the Sql Express Database on the Bigfix computer to a SQL 2005 Server. The BigFix install is staying on the original server.

Thanks

Lee

4

(imported comment written by SystemAdmin)

Hey Lee,

If you aren’t moving server, I think you just need to run the installer for SQL 2005 Server. It should notice that SQL Express is installed and upgrade it. The upgrade won’t break anything on the BigFix side.

-Tyler

5

(imported comment written by gcibirch91)

Sorry…what I meant was I only want to move the database from the current bigfix server to our actual dedicated SQL 2005 Server box. Is this possible and what are the steps?

6

(imported comment written by SystemAdmin)

gcibirch

Sorry…what I meant was I only want to move the database from the current bigfix server to our actual dedicated SQL 2005 Server box. Is this possible and what are the steps?

I have asked this and everyone says that BigFix needs it’s own SQL installation.

Jeff

7

(imported comment written by BenKus)

To be clear:

  • The easiest configuration is to have BigFix Server and SQL Server on the same system.
  • It is fine to have SQL Server on a remote system (it just means some extra config work).
  • It is possible to have SQL Server on a remote shared database system BUT it is not recommended for performance reasons…

Ben

8

(imported comment written by pcaprio91)

Good Afternoon Ben,

We are wanting to do this also at our company. We want to export the SQL database from our BES server and import it into the corporate SQL server farm (due to SQL licensing costs). Then point the BES server to use the SQL DB on the dedicated SQL server.

You stated in your last post that it is not recommended to do this due to possible performance reasons.

What type of performance issues have you or others seen in this type of configuration?

We would like to test this scenerio, but we would need to download the evaulation version.

Question I have is, if I export the existing SQL DB and have it imported into the SQL server farm and I point the BigFix evaluation server to point to the DB in the server farm, will this impact our existing BES deployment (server and clients) which is in Production use?

Thx

Phil

9

(imported comment written by SystemAdmin)

  • You should be concerned with latency, by requiring disk access be sent over a network link you are introducing a new point of slowness before the data reaches the drives. SQL database performance, especially for our database, are heavily effected by latency. This can be a problem no matter how fast the drives are on the other side.
  • You should be concerned with the performance of the disks on the remote server. We require fast read and write for our database. Lots of times SQL cluster disks are build to provide lots of slow disks, especially for writing. We want a small number of fast drives, not a lot of slow ones.

In regards to testing, the easiest thing to do would be to restore a copy of your production database on the new SQL cluster. Than make an ODBC connection to it on a remote computer and use it to launch your BES Console against it. You should be able to get a feel for how good things are just by this simple test. (Don’t try to take actions or install the BES Server).

It’s possible to do more complicated tests to do a more formal performance test of the hardware but this would probably be a professional services activity.

10

(imported comment written by BenKus)

Note that for shared database systems, we are certainly worried about other database applications affecting BigFix performance… but… normally when people try this, we hear that the main problem is the other way around… i.e., BigFix Server will drive lots of small database writes to the database server that tend to affect overall database performance of other applications…

Ben