Upgrade In-Place To Keep Same Server Name?

SQL Server Administration
1

Hi experts,
I'm tasked with upgrading several 2008/2014 instances to MSSQL 2019.

Having done many such migrations, I usually build a new VM, install SQL Server and migrate everything over.

But this client wants to do in-place upgrades to keep the same server name so connection strings don't have to be modified. (They do NOT use SPNs, which would eliminate this problem)

Is there a way to migrate to a new VM yet be able to reference the original server name afterwards?

Thanks.

2

You can use CNAME and/or SQL Server alias.

ps The alias only works with Microsoft clients not JDBC etc

1 Like
3

Thanks for the reply Lfor. Those posts are very old and I wonder if there are better techniques.

These servers have the 2012 OS and SQL Server 2014. We will either do an in-place upgrade of the OS and SQL OR migrate to a new 2019 OS server which has SQL 2019. But the client doesn't want to migrate to new VM because it will require a new server name and connections will break.
I'm still not clear on the steps required to use CNAMEs to force a connection to redirect to the new server (which will have the same name as the old SQL Server).
Can anyone provide more details? Thanks.

4

For CNAME you will need to contact your client's network team to get them to amend DNS.
SQL alias works well if you only have a few application servers to deal with and there are no direct connections from PCs.