Best Practice - Upgrade vCenter Server 5 MS-SQL 2K8 Express to SQL 2K8R2 Enterprise?

[Cannoli]

Does anyone have a best practice or real experience with upgrading vCenter Server 5 on Win2k8R2 running SQL Express 2k8R2 to vCenter Server 5 on Win2k8R2 running SQL Enterprise 2k8R2?

I want to build a new VM to host vCenter Server and point it to either a locally installed instance of SQL Enterprise 2k8R2 or a remote instance.  Is there really an advantage to pointing to  a remote instance of SQL?

What is the best path to take to do this?  I would want the new vCenter Server VM to use the same hostname and IP address if possible.

I already read the upgrade best practice for migrating from vCenter Server 4.1 to 5 but it's not exactly what I'm looking to do.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

[aravinds3107]

You can take a look at this KB for migrating SQL database to another server.

Is there really an advantage to pointing to  a remote instance of SQL

By having SQL database at remote location, in case of a disaster you can bring up the vCenter enviroment in a quick time.

Incase if you are running SQL server as a VM in the same cluster as vCenter you have make sure SQL server comes up online before the vCenter server in case HA has triggered.

(You would need a additional windows server license if you are are going to use SQL only for vCenter purpose):smileysad:

Incase of your Local database make sure your DB is backed up and stored up in a remote location.

[Virtualinfra]

At this point of time, up to i know configuring database for vcenter can be done only when installing vcenter server.

the best and better way is to run the vcenter setup and configure the database..