Autodesk Vault

[#1]

Hi guys,

a question about Vault 2012 and SQL 2008. I am the sysadmin of the company and not very familiair with Inventor or vault. So I hope you are patient with me

Currently we have a Vault 2010 and SQL 2005 Standard installation on our Inventor server. The user is running Inventor 2010. Recently we purchased the upgrade for Inventor 2012 (Ultimate edition). Now I am faced with the challenge to upgrade SQL 2005 -> 2008 on the Inventor server, before upgrading the Vault to 2012. Since we have the SQL 2005 Standard we should buy a 2008 Standard license and upgrade, right? But the 2008 Express edition is sufficient for us. So my IT partner suggested to install SQL server 2008 Express alongside the current SQL 2005 installation. Make a back-up of the SQL 2005 database. Dismount it. Restore it in SQL 2008 Express and mount it. Then tell the Inventor Management server to start using this new database instance.

My question: will this work? Is it just a matter of backup/restore SQL data to a newer version and tell Inventor to use the other database and upgrade to version 2012? Or will that fail? What do you guys think?

[#2]

Russell,

I suggest that you post this message in the Vault Discussion group:

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Autodesk-Vault/bd-p/101

The people that hang out there are more qualified to help you.

I hope this helps,

[#3]

No this will not work.  The SQL instance must be named AutodeskVault and therefore you cannot have 2 instances with the same name on the same computer.

[#4]

Irvin  on both replies. 

1st reply - Your link seems to (? I could be wrong) lead back to the same discussion thread where I found this posting, it's circular.  So I think that should be removed.

2nd reply - "No this will not work" although accurate is not helpful... What does work?  What should be done? Reading the installation instructions does not reveal an answer and I need the exact steps to do what exactly what Russell is asking about; perform a 2005 to 2008 SQL upgrade / install / backup and restore (?) in order to install or upgrade (conflicting information exists) Vault 2010 to 2012.  I was assured by tech support that all this was thoughly explained and outlined in the installation manual... not that I saw.

Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

[#5]

I'd suggest the following as I don't believe (havent tested) that you can upgrade a SQL 2005 Standard instance with SQL 2008 R2 (You will need to goto R2 as R2 has the 10GB limit)

• Backup using the ADMS Console
• Uninstall ADMS and SQL 2005
• Install SQL 2008 Express R2 per our Advanced Configuration Guide with an instance named AutodeskVault
• Install ADMS 2012
• Restore

Note: SQL 2008 R2 is different than SQL 2008, R2 is not Service Pack 2

-Hywell

[#6]

According to Microsoft, you can upgrade SQL 2005 to SQL 2008 or SQL 2008 R2.

SQL 2008 R2 Upgrade Path

SQL 2008 Upgrade Path

Here are some steps to follow:

• Backup using the ADMS Console
• Upgrade SQL 2005 to SQL 2008 per
• Install ADMS 2012 - This will uninstall the previous ADMS version automatically.

[#7]

Thanks for all the help. We've decided to purchase a SQL server 2008 R2 license for the upgrade. Before that I tested with the 2005 Standard -> 2008 R2 Express and it seems to work! What I did in my test environment:

Current situation:

- Autodesk Inventor server 2010

- SQL Server 2005 standard

- Created a backup for test env.

test server:

- Windows server 2003

- Installation of SQL server 2008 R2 Express

- Installation of Vault server 2012

- Restored backup from production server.

- Voila, it worked

This differs a bit from my original question, since ihayesjr pointed out that you can't have 2 instances with the same name. So a bit of tweaking is required. Perhaps useful for the others.