We use SCVMM 2008 R2 for a long time to manage our virtual machines. We have exactly 180 active virtual machines on Hyper-V Cluster with 6 nodes and 13 standalone Hyper-V servers. SCVMM 2008 R2 is a real hero to manage and monitor our virtual machines. But a few days ago, we got some issues with SCVMM. We couldn’t add user roles for SSP, even couldn’t change owner of the vms. I checked the event logs, because SQL wasn’t responding to SCVMM.

Another one:

At the same time SCVMM gave:

After that, I installed MSSQL Management Studio and checked the size of the database “VirtualManagerDB”. That was 4 GB. SCVMM installs MSSQL 2005 Express Edition and because of express edition license, you are limited to 4 gb for a database. Then I decided to upgrade database to MSSQL 2008 R2 Standard Edition.

First of all, I installed MSSQL 2008 R2 Standard Edition on the same machine. After installation, you need to move your mssql 2005 database to mssql 2008. It was really easy, just you need to detach from old SQL and then attach to new SQL server.

You can detach as here:

And you can attach to new SQL server as here:

You can find SCVMM database under this path:

I used this simple nice article to move my database, you can also see the steps from here:

After moving your database, you need to set your SCVMM to use new SQL server.
Now you need to edit some registry keys to do that. In the registry, navigate to following subkey:

I used default instance name of MSSQL 2008 R2. Modify your registry key like here:

My connection string:

After modifying connection string, you should change DependOnService configuration. Navigate to here:

Modify your registry key like here:

Now, our SCVMM 2008 R2 works on MSSQL 2008 R2 Standard Edition. Wohoo! Time to eat Whooper Menu :)