Avantgarde Technologies
Quick Links:
Recently a client came to me asking to migrate an old SQL database from SQL2000 over to their primary SQL server (SQL2012). As most of you most likely know, there is no direct migration path from SQL2000 to SQL2012.
To ensure that the migration was done as quickly as possible with minimal down-time, we needed to bring in an SQL2005 or SQL2008 instance to be the ‘middle man’. In this case, we used SQL2008, as it was readily available and we could install it straight away (without having to wait for the ISO to download etc).
In order to successfully migrate the database from SQL2000 to SQL2012, we have to export the databases from 2000, then import them into 2008. Confirm that it’s been restored successfully into the 2008 instance. Once we’ve done that, you can now export the databases again from the 2008 instance. The process from here is rather simple. Just import the new .bak files into the SQL2012 server and it should work without any problems.
There is no need to create a new server for this job. You can simply install a SQL2008 or SQL2005 instance on the existing server (that you’re planning to decommission), do the migration and then remove it.
