Upgrading from 2008 SQL Express edition to 2008 SQL Express R2 Edition

SharePoint Database upgrade SQL Express to SQL Express R2 to increase 4 GB limit to 10 GB.

At AceSoft we always see a common issue from our new clients and almost all the newbie SharePoint implementers faced this issue, installed SharePoint foundation with SQL express as back end to check out how it works out for them and one fine day SharePoint will stop accepting files uploading to doc repository.  Then usually it comes with a very ambiguous error :

“The URL ‘Shared Documents/your site/doc repository/yourfile.zip’ is invalid. It may refer to a nonexistent file or folder, or refer to a valid file or folder that is not in the current Web”

When you search in net, you will be surprised to see how many useless suggestions you will see for this error message. MicroSoft should’ve simply said -“hey your DB is full, go and get upgrade” to make some sense with this error message. Make sure you always read event viewer before jumping into conclusions , it will tell you something like this – “you have exceeded your limit of 4096MB with your current license” . Then make sure SQL express is the culprit. I also accept the fact this error message shows up when your content type mismatches with file type, lets keep those aside and lets concentrate how to upgrade your DB.

First make sure you’ve installed the binaries with tools, especially with SQL management studio. If not you may find little hard to see the version numbers, else just going to installed location of SQL server you can find version number there as well (DriveLetter:/ProgramFiles/MSSQL/…)

Lets get started. At AceSoft, we always follow our best practises. It is important to have available nifty neat tools installed and handy for better and quick troubleshooting. It is a good practise to download the MSSQL binaries with tools always unless you want to get into command prompt SQLCMD just to know the version of your SQL server(an example). So go ahead and download SQLEXPRWT_X64.exe and I think its around 310 MB. Download it and double click to install it. It will take you through normal “agree this” “agree that” terms and conditions. Once that is complete, always make sure to take back up for your existing contents. Before that you may need to stop your IIS services(WWPublishing), any search services( Search server foundation v4) etc. Now your site is safely down.  Now lets not SharePoint complain about server restart, because we installed new SQL express R2, so go ahead and restart your server.

Now login to SQL manager and start taking backups or DB backups. Right click on DBTable ->task->Backup. Once you’ve done that you can start upgrade process by selecting “upgrade from” item from install tab of wizard. It may take a while and make sure you select right domain and other things on the way. Once that is complete, go ahead and restart the services which you stopped earlier and viola – you are now blessed with 6 more GB worth of space in your SharePoint. Try uploading couple of big files and you will be able to see SharePoint behaving now like a tamed beast

Please note, this article above is for experienced SharePoint admins to refer , so kept the things at high level. I tried to explain only main points. AceSoft will not give any guarantee on above information and we will not be liable for any damage caused because of this article.

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