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Merging/Joining 2 DPA Repositories

Hi,

We have 2 servers with 2 DPA installations and 2 repositories, one of them internally and the other one in an Azure server. We want to migrate the internal one to the Azure server and we want to be able to monitor all of DBs (over 20) from the same DPA installation that is already in the Azure server.

I have moved DPA repositories before, but I'm not sure if we can join 2 DPA repositories. If we can't join the 2 DBs, then we would lose the monitoring history from either most of the DBs or the most important DB, which would be a big loss. Is there any way to either join both repositories or export the history of the DBs that we will move so we can import it again?

Thank you

Parents
  • I'm not sure of merging the data and how complicated it might be (e.g., export only a subset of repo tables and whether assigned ids, etc. may have to be massaged to match the Azure).

    A couple of alternatives you might want to consider:

    1. Keep the on-premises DPA server around for as long as you are interested in its history. Then configure your Azure DPA Server to function as a DPA Central so that you can reference the historical information from your on-prem Azure DPA.
    2. If you don't plan on using the history often, migrate the on-premises DPA repo and import it into a separate database in your Azure Repo instance. Then when you want to access it, launch a 2nd DPA Server, disable collection, view history, and shutdown the 2nd instance.
    3. Export/import the on-premises data into a separate database and create queries or reports against it and/or create views that union the active and archived data together.
  • I confirmed that merging will be difficult because of DPA Server generated names, ids that would likely conflict between the two DPA Server databases. Doing so will require a lot of manual, custom work to resolve and maintain data integrity.

  • Awesome! Thank you for all the information. I think we are really tending to DPA Central, just need to confirm resourcing in general.

    The idea now is that since we are going to continue to grow, instead of just using the "moved" instance as history, we would keep both active and be able to just keep growing.

    Thank you!

Reply
  • Awesome! Thank you for all the information. I think we are really tending to DPA Central, just need to confirm resourcing in general.

    The idea now is that since we are going to continue to grow, instead of just using the "moved" instance as history, we would keep both active and be able to just keep growing.

    Thank you!

Children
  • RE:

    • Regarding DPA Central, can it be done by still moving the on-premise DPA to Azure but have 2 separate Azure repositories? I read that DPA central uses the server information to connect so I dont know if we can have the 2 DPA instances in one server and connect them through DPA Central.

    You can have 2 DPA servers running on one OS in Azure, but make sure the OS is Linux. Could potentially use Windows, but it is much more difficult especially on upgrades. Overall, I would still recommend separate VMs to avoid some of the problems mentioned in my earlier response.

  • So did the 2 DPA App servers and 2 dpa_respositories work for you?  We have a similar situation this week.  Acquired a company with DPA and we already have an existing DPA environment.  After reading this thread, looks to be the easiest thing to do, have 2 DPA App servers and restore the new company dpa database to the same SQL box.