Migrate to SQL Server Standard 2019 Evaluation to Standard using 2022 License

Question

Hello,

we're reaching expire date of SQL Server Enterprise 2019 Evalutation.

Now we're going to buy Standard 2022 license because 2019 isn't available anymore but we'd prefer not to upgrade the entire edition (unless we're sure that migration/upgrade won't brake our current database and will not change anything). So the question is: what's the correct procedure to migrate/activate and downgrade at the same time without risks?

Thank you

Answer 1

According to https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/database-engine/install-windows/supported-version-and-edition-upgrades-2022?view=sql-server-ver16, upgrading from SQL 2019 Evaluation to SQL 2022 Standard is a supported upgrade path, so just do an in-place upgrade.

There is a small risk that you have been using/relying on features on available in Standard, so you may first want to install SQL 2022 Standard in a test environment and restore backups of the databases to test.

Answer 2

First backup your databases.

you can then install a new Sqlserver 2022 instance and restore the databases, or have install upgrade the existing 2019 instance.

note: downgrading an instance is not supported. So if you want to fallback to 2019, you need to install a new instance.