Hi,
Is there a way to restore a database from a previous version of vCenter to a newer version of vCenter without using the installer? Ideally I'd like to have an ISO with vCenter already installed and SQL configured, so I can just backup the existing vCenter db and restore on the new version.
I tried to restore a backup of a vCenter 5 database to vCenter 5 update 2 (same versions of Windows 2K8 & MS SQL) on a different machine. The backup and restore works fine in MS SQL. When I start the vCenter service it failed to start with an error:
Database version id '500' is incompatible with this release of VirtualCenter
I manually modified the db table, so the db version was 502 and this error no longer occurs, but of course the schema is incorrect and results in other errors.
I'm just tinkering in a test environment, so there are no concerns about data loss at this time. I read the vSphere upgrade guide and some KB articles, but I haven't seen anything that specifically addresses my question.
Thanks.