Moving TFS to SQL 2012

Question

With the new version of SQL 2012 coming down I have a question. Since it seems that MS will be changing the licensing costs on for SQL2012 our company will probably be using much less of the enterprise version. My question is that currently my TFS install is on SQL2008R2 Enterprise and currently the TFS documentation says that you should not try to move an instance of TFS that is on Enterprise to a SQL instance that is on Standard. Will there be an issue with moving from SQL 2008R2 Ent to SQL 2012 Standard? Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi Brthomas, 

 

Thanks for your post. 

 

If you want to move TFS’s database from SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise to SQL Server 2012 Standard, I think you should contact SQL Server experts to confirm this first: If the SQL Server 2012 Standard full support(exactly compatible) the databases which moved from SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, you can post it at: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/sqlserver for the better response.

 

And I didn’t find anything in MSDN or TFS documentation to ensure that TFS 2010 is compatible with the SQL Server 2012 Standard. If the TFS’s database fully compatible in SQL Server 2012 Standard, you can do this migration in a test environment first.   

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John Qiao [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 2

Hi Brthomas, 

 

If misunderstood anything, please describe your question in more detail and we will be able to provide the better responses.

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John Qiao [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 3

I think that this is more of a TFS question than a SQL question as of right now you cannot move a colleciton from SQL 2008 Ent to SQL 2008 Std. it says so when you detach. My understanding is that TFS setups the collection according to what version you have of SQL and so you cant go back. So I think that my question still stands.

Answer 4

Hi Brthomas,

 

Thanks for your reply.

 

Ok. So I want to confirm with you that can you ensure the SQL Server 2012 Standard exactly compatible with SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise?

 

If you want moving from SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise to SQL Server 2012 Standard, you need to move(backup and restore) the TFS database from SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise to SQL Server 2012 Standard first, right? If the SQL Server 2012 Standard doesn’t support the databases which moved from SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, how can you perform that moving progress? This is first issue you must to confirm, it’s relate to SQL Server. If SQL Server 2012 Standard exactly compatible the database which moved from SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, I think Server 2012 Standard still support TFS databases which from SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise.

 

The second issue is that if TFS 2010 support with SQL Server 2012 Standard. As I said in my initial reply, I didn’t find anything in MSDN or TFS documentation to ensure that TFS 2010 is compatible with SQL Server 2012 Standard. I suggest you install TFS 2010 and configure it with SQL Server 2012 Standard in a test environment, if you occur some detailed issue during configure TFS 2010 with SQL Server 2012 Standard, please provide the detailed information here.             

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John Qiao [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 5

We have the same question. We are trying to move from TFS 2010 with SQL 2008 R2 Enterprise to TFS 2012 with SQL 2012 Standard. Is that supported? I don't want to take my chances and see if it works in the test environment or not. Can we get some official response on this issue?

TIA,

Vik

Answer 6

I figured it out the hard way. The bottom line is we can't go from SQL Enterprise to SQL Standard. As there are additional features in Enterprise that are not in Standard edition. You'll get errors when you try to restore the databases.

Basically you can't downgrade the SQL edition but you can always upgrade.

Regards,

Vik

Answer 7

I see and so that was to SQL 2012 standard then. I hear that there are scripts you can run to undo the necessity for the features but I havent gone out and looked for those. I believe Table Compression is implemented. I am not for sure what undoing that would look like especially since I have large DBs. At any rate I need SQL 2012 Enterprise to use Always on.