SG SQL Server Usergroup

Hihi,

Need advice in switching from 32bit to 64bit server for MS SQL 2005:

1. Whether there are any common known issues to look out for or
2. Any checklist that we can go through to verify impact of change
3. Experience sharing, if any

Regards,

Hi Cecilia,

By saying 64bit i am guessing that your processor will be x64 and not Itanium.

If my assumptions are correct, then there will be no issues to look into since both editions of SQL Server uses the same on-disk structures which means you can simply detach your database from a 32 bit platform and attach it to an x64 platform. You don't need to change anything else... On the database and on the application level that is. On the server level, there are a few settings that you need to configure properly like processor affinity, memory utilization and so on. Remember that this time around, you are no longer limited to 4Gb addressable ram.

If you are upgrading to Itanium however, please note that Business Intelligence Development Studio does not run on Itanium. Which means that you cannot create BIDS project in your Itanium server which by right, you should be really doing dev on a prod environment...

HTH

Hi Pom, 

Yes, it's a x64 bit server.

Thanks for the sharing

Regards,

Cecilia

Hi Cecilia, why am i not surprised to see you here. :D

Just to share with the rest... We found out few more things about 64bits on x64 machine:

1. There's no DTS run time on 64bit server, so SQL Server 2000 DTS package is not supported. Need to re-code using SSIS instead.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms137907.aspx

2. .net user-defined functions compiled using 32bit implementation will require compilation using 64bit implementation.

3. linked server between 32bit (on SQL Server 2000 and older) and 64bit may not always work.

http://searchsqlserver.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid87_gci1241693,00.html (credit to darenhan for pointing out the article)