So I’ve decided that instead of spending a lot of time in part 2 dealing with the process of transitioning from Standard to Enterprise, I’d spend just a little time discussing the process.

It was ironic that an opportunity arose (through a post in the Microsoft Technet forum) to help another IT professional with the deployment in their organization around the same time I started this series. They had a Standard edition pilot and were transitioning to an Enterprise pool, but were running into problems being able to transition the SQL store. I wont give out any names or too many details, but it ended up being that they were trying to build a new Enterprise edition topology and not adding an Enterprises pool into their existing topology with the Standard edition pool. So make sure when you transition, use your existing topology!

I was able to recommend a great blog post by Tom Pacyk that helps in migrating the central management store to a new SQL server that is servicing your Enterprise pool. The one thing it is missing is that, if you are using SQL instances, that you use the -SqlInstanceName switch. So a fully working Powershell command would look like this:

Install-CsDatabase -CentralManagementDatabase -UseDefault
SQLPaths -SQLServerFQDN “sql2.test.domain.com” -SQLInstanceName “irdb01”

Finally the only other catch was that the account using to provision the new CsDatabase did not have the proper SQL permission. They failed with a message like this:

PS C:\Users\admin.user> Install-CsDatabase -CentralManagementDatabase -UseDefaultSqlPaths -SqlServerFqdn sql2.test.domain.com -SqlInstanceName “irdb

Installed SQL Server 2005 Backward Compatibility version is 8.05.2312
Connecting to SQL Server on sql2.test.domain.com\irdb01
SqlMajorVersion : 10
SqlMinorVersion : 50
SqlBuildNo : 2500
SQL version is acceptable: 10.50.2500.0
Default database data file path is G:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL1
_50.IRDB01\MSSQL\Data
Default database data file path is G:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL1
_50.IRDB01\MSSQL\Data
Default database log file path is G:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10
50.IRDB01\MSSQL\Data
Unable to access data drive as represented by \\sql2.test.domain.com\G$\P
ogram Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10_50.IRDB01\MSSQL\Data
—————
Exit code: ERROR_NO_DB_DRIVE_ACCESS (-42)
—————

Once the SQL admin gave the necessary rights, the databases were installed successfully and they were able to use the Move-CsMoveManagementStore command.

Once the servers were recreated in the existing topology and published, they were able to begin installing the server roles, deploying certificates, and moving users between pools. This fun we’ll dive into more in Part 2!