Database

How to Upgrade SQL Server 2016 to 2019

By Muhammad Kamran | Published December 7, 2022

Database upgrades from lower versions to higher versions are often required in an organization and are performed by SQL DBA. Today we will discuss the steps to upgrade SQL Server 2016 to 2019. Before initiating the Upgrade process, it is important to check the system requirements for a particular SQL Server edition. You also need to make sure; your existing SQL Servers support the upgrade. It is also important to take a backup of all the databases before starting the upgrade process.

Upgrade the SQL 2016 to 2019

I will run the SQL upgrade steps on a test SQL Instance SW16 that is currently running on SQL Server 2016 SP3 edition.

1. The first step is to log in to the server as an administrator or with the user having local admin permission.
2. Open the SQL Server 2019 installation media, and run the setup file as an administrator. A new wizard will be displayed like below:

3. Click on the Installation on the left side, and then click Upgrade from a previous version of SQL Server as highlighted in the above screenshot. A new wizard will appear like the below:

4. In this step, different checks are performed to confirm if there will be any potential problems during the upgrade of the SQL Server from 2016 to 2019. The SQL Server setup support files are used for the installation and upgradation. Click on the Show details >> button to view the details of the checks performed. If any of the checks failed, a red icon will be displayed with it. All the checks that are passed will be displayed with a green icon on the Global Rules screen as shown in the above screenshot.

Normally, when all the checks are passed, the wizard will automatically go to the next screen. However, you can click on the Back button to see the Global Rules screen and the status of all the checks performed.

5. In the Microsoft Update screen, you can select the checkbox ‘Use Microsoft Update to check for updates’ to check for new updates online. When you select the checkbox, the product updates page will appear to download new updates. However, I opt not to select the checkbox in this case and I click on the Next button, which displayed the following screen. 

6. The Install Setup files screen will install any downloaded files. As we did not select the Microsoft update checkbox on the previous screen, so we do not need to do anything on this screen and we will be diverted to the next screen shown below.

7. In this screen, different checks are performed regarding the SQL Server Upgrade to 2019. These rules will identify any possible issues that might appear during the upgrade process. All the checks performed will have an icon in different colors showing the status of the check, like a Green icon representing the passed check and a red icon showing that the check failed. You can Re-run the checks performed after fixing the red icons. Click on the Next button to move to the next step.

8. Click on Enter the product key option. The product key should appear automatically, if not then manually enter the product key and click the Next button.

9. Click on the checkbox I accept the license terms and click the Next Button.

10. At this step, select the SQL Server Instance that you want to upgrade, as I intended to upgrade the SQL Server Instance SW16 to SQL Server 2019, So I Select SW16 in the Instance to upgrade section as shown in the above screenshot.

All the SQL Server instances installed on that server are visible in the Installed instances section. You will see different information for the installed instances like Instance Name, Instance ID, Feature, Edition, and current version. Click the next button to show the next screen.

11. On the Select feature page, all the features eligible for the upgrade are selected by default. Click the Next button to see the next screen.

12. The Instance Configuration screen is normally used to outline the name and instance ID of the SQL Server instance. Since we are not doing new SQL installation but we are upgrading the SQL Server from 2016 to 2019, so we do not need to change any value. In fact, we cannot change the Instance name at this step. Click Next to move to the Server Configuration Page.

13. In the Server Configuration screen, you will see the service accounts already in use. You do not need to change the service accounts. Click Next to show the Ready to upgrade screen.

14. In this screen, you will see the summary of all the settings that are selected in all the previous screens along with other information like prerequisites, installed components, etc. Once you confirm the details mentioned in the Summary page, then click on the upgrade button to start the installation and upgrade process.

The upgrade process screen will show you the upgrade status. Once the upgrade process is successfully completed, you will see the list of components installed with a green icon as shown in the below screenshot.

When the SQL upgrade is completed successfully, close the wizard. Connect to SQL Server management studio to confirm the new upgraded version for the SQL instance SW16.

As per the above screenshot, the instance SW16 is successfully upgraded to SQL Server 2019.

Conclusion

In this article, we discuss the steps to upgrade SQL 2016 to 2019. We tried to keep the steps as simple as possible. We applied all these steps on test SQL Instance SW16. The steps mentioned in this article are tested for the upgrade of SQL 2016 to SQL 2019, but the same steps can be applied to upgrade other versions of the SQL server. The only point to take care of is that the upgrade SQL version supports the current SQL version as mentioned at the beginning of this article.

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