Upgrade from 6.4 to 2020.2.5 and SQL 2017

We had 6.4 using 2008 SQLEXPRESS 32 bit. Boss wants to upgrade to 2020.2.5 on the same machine. He installed 64 bit SQL 2017. I went to run the configuration wizard / Database to point 6.4 to the new 2017 SQL instance and get this error window:

You are attempting to use an unsupported version of SQL Server.

Please select a database on a SQL Server using any of the following supported Microsoft SQL Server Express, Standard or Enterprise versions:

SQL Server 2008 RTM or later (32-bit or 64bit)
SQL Server 2008 R2 RTM or later (32-bit or 64bit)
SQL Server 2012 RTM or later (32-bit or 64bit)
SQL Server 2014 RTM or later (32-bit or 64bit)
SQL Server 2016 RTM or later (32-bit or 64bit)

Will we need to install SQL 2016 to point 6.4 to before we run the upgrade to 2020.2.5 or is there a work around I am not aware of?

Thanks,
-danny

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Seashore

Going from NPM (?) 6.4 to 2020.2.5 will require a lot of small steps. You can't go directly to the latest version.

In your customer portal there is a upgrade-advisor to show you the steps: https://customerportal.solarwinds.com/support/product-upgrade-advisor, but that only goes back to NPM 10.2. I suggest you contact support for a possible upgrade path.

From 10.2 to 2020.2.5 you have to go to 10.6.1 to 11.5.3 to 12.0.1 to 2020.2.5. You will have more steps probably.

Maybe easier to start over!??!

dshaw66

Thanks for your response. Do you know if there is a way to point 6.4 to SQL 2017 so I can then proceed with the upgrade steps?

Seashore

Don't know, probably not. SQL 2017 was not thought of when NPM 6.4 was brought to life

mesverrum

^ just confirming, in the past i have had to stand up intermediate instances of sql to bridge us through upgrades. I will say that the extra work and risk of migrating through all those intermediate versions is rarely worth the extra hassle compared to standing up a completely new instance on a second server and just starting from scratch. It's usually not too big of an effort to copy most things over and rebuild them in the more modern way.

Also gives you an opportunity to rethink the way things were done at that time because I will tell you people tend to carry a lot of baggage forward that they are better off leaving.