Upgrade complete

The answer to my SQL Server 2008 x64 upgrade problem

OK, for those of you who follow me you know I've been having problems upgrading my x64 Katmai box in my lab. Well, working with some very good guys (and cute as well) at MS, I've solved my problem and now have a working x64 Katmai instance that I upgraded from Yukon.

Oddly enough the problem really wasn't with Katmai setup at all. The problem came from having a member of the press who likes to be on the bleeding edge. In working with the guys, we just couldn't get around the SKU problem. Setup was reporting a SKU difference that was keeping it from going forward. The problem was that no matter which version I tried to install I got the same error. So that started me thinking. The documentation on MSDN was wrong for a couple days and kept changing. What if something happened with the downloads as well? So I just re-downloaded the enterprise version thinking that maybe something was wrong the first time. That did the trick. Once setup read the proper version on the Katmai side the upgrade went flawlessly.

I guess that just goes to show you that it's called the bleeding edge for a reason.

So this makes me a lot more comfortable to move ahead with upgrades at work and I look forward to trying a couple as soon as I can.

And as for the restrictions I mentioned in my original article... well, I apparently caught MSDN in flux because all that's changed now. So go ahead and start your testing for your upgrades. It's really not that bad.

Oh, and SP1 for .net 3.5 and VS08 went RTM yesterday so you can download those guys now.

I'll also be starting on my big and detailed review of Katmai here pretty soon. It'll be larger than a normal review and I'll be putting a lot of specific features to the test.

And at this point I'd like to send a special shoutout to the guys at MS who stuck with me through this whole mess to get me going... Richard Waymire and Buck Woody. But I'll let you guys fight over which one of them's the cutest.

OK, I've got one more thing that I just remembered. Remember in my other post when I said that I wasn't sure if my tools upgraded because they still said 'SQL_PreRelease'... well, it turns out that's a bug. So if you notice it in your install don't freak out.