Upgrade Assistant for SQL Server 2012 (UAFS) and SQL Server Upgrade Advisor

On March 7, 2012, Microsoft went live with a big virtual launch event for SQL Server 2012. In case you missed the launch event, you can still view all the videos, download the presentation slides, and learn more information at the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 launch event website. However, is there any help if you want to test the plausibility of an existing application's upgrade from an earlier version of SQL Server to SQL Server 2012? As it turns out, there are two tools that can help you.

Remember that you shouldn't undertake an upgrade to an important business-critical database lightly. You wouldn't think that I'd need to say this, but I've received so many desperate emails from users who've jumped right into an upgrade with inadequate analysis. Preparing and testing in advance for an upgrade is the only way to be certain that the application will continue to function like it did before the upgrade. These two tools will make your upgrade much easier.

Features

The UAFS tool walks you through the entire upgrade process, from backing up the databases that you'll test, capturing a workload trace, and replaying the trace for functionality testing. The process finally finishes by comparing the results to identify differences between the database running on the older version of SQL Server and the version running on SQL Server 2012.

This tool also makes significant use of the distributed replay feature, which makes it possible for the tool to replay a traced workload through multiple clients (see Figure 1). After running the tests and capturing the workloads' results, you can produce and review reports that quickly identify problems by comparing overall performance (located in the Summary Info section) or event by event performance (located in the Event Detail section) on the baseline and test server. As Figure 2 shows, you can also filter out events and details to better prescribe the analysis.

System Requirements

The UAFS tool requires several components, including the following:

To download the UAFS tool, visit the Scalability Experts website. Feel free to ask questions and provide feedback at Microsoft's SQL Server Setup & Upgrade forum. Also, there's an extensive set of documentation at the Microsoft "Upgrade Assistant Tool for SQL Server 2012" web page. As always, SQL Server Pro wants to hear your feedback at the Tool Time discussion forum.