Monday, October 22, 2012

OM12: Moving Any Database By Any Change?

For SCOM R2 I had my own procedures in place when moving those databases. Now I have a customer who is about to move the OM12 databases and related SSRS instance as well to another SQL Server.

So it was time to see what Microsoft TechNet has in place and to compare notes with what I had for SCOM R2. Soon a couple of things turned out:

  1. My procedures required some serious updates and fast in order to reflect the changes in OM12;
  2. The TechNet procedures aren’t complete neither. When you follow them exactly you’ll end up with a broken OM12 environment which is really bad.

Today I spend at least 9 hours to rewrite those two different procedures into a new single set. Tested them twice in order to make sure they’re OK now.

Both times I installed a brand new SQL Server, snapshotted my OM12 Management Servers and moved all those OM12 databases to that new SQL Server. Since moving the Data Warehouse database or better the related SSRS instance is the trickiest part here, I took special measures for that one.

Finally I succeeded in it and ended up with a document which covers 21 pages, TOC included. About nine pages are used for a SQL query which must be run against the Master database of the new SQL Server.

For weeks now I have tried to get a definitive answer from Microsoft allowing me to share that specific SQL query with the community. Until now however to no avail. Microsoft is a big company and sometimes it’s hard to get through to the right department and persons.

Since I don’t want to get into a (legal) fight with Microsoft (guess who has the deepest pockets) I’ll refrain myself from sharing it with the community. Whenever I get the green light though I’ll post a new series all about moving the OM12 databases and related SSRS instance to a new SQL Server.

Update
It seems that the System Center 2012 – Operations Manager Unleashed book will contain a spot on procedure about moving the OM12 databases and SSRS instance to another SQL Server. This procedure is different compared to mine but WORKS as well
Glimlach.

3 comments:

devi said...

4Hi Marnix,

Should SCOM 2012 databases (Opsmgr,DW and reporting) run on a single instance of SQL 2008 Standard edition r2.

Thx
par

Marnix Wolf said...

Hi Par.

In certain conditions one can run alle OM12 databases on a single instance of SQL Server. For instance in smaller environments it's OK. Jn bigger environments (enterprises) it's better to use seperate SQL Server isntances running in a HA setup or not.

Cheers,
Marnix

devi said...

Our SCOM will monitor just less than < 200 servers only and we wont monitor APM and network devices.

So in that case, i can run all the SCOM DB's in one single instance (SQL standard edition)

Thanks,
Pardevi