Upgrade from 32-bit to AMD-64?

[Karl Denninger]

Xin LI wrote:
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> Karl Denninger wrote:
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>> I guess I need to schedule the 2-3 hours of downtime..... the reason for
>> this, by the way, is that I have a dbms app on there that is getting too
>> RAM hungry for its own good (its a Quadcore CPU) and I'm up against the
>> RAM limit for 32-bit code.  The board will support more but 32-bit code
>> won't; ergo, the only way to get beyond this is to go to 64-bit.
>>     
>
> Oh wait!  One thing you wanted to know is that, some database *can* have
> different on-disk format for 32-bit and 64-bit binaries.  Be sure to
> have a dump handy.  Last time I hit this on a MySQL "upgrade" between
> two servers, and I end up using its replication functionality.  The
> operation took longer time than I expected at the beginning.
>
> My personal suggestion is that you do an experiment on another box
> (64-bit capable) to make sure that the data would work, this never hurts
> and avoids surprises (you do want 64-bit compile of your database
> application since you want to take full advantage of 64-bit OS); also,
> just like all upgrades, full backup is advised.
>
> Cheers,
> - --
> Xin LI <delphij at delphij.net>	http://www.delphij.net
I already know I have to dump the database and then reload it - I 
attempted to migrate the disk structure across (which would have saved 
even more time) and got instantaneously hosed, presumably due to 
internal data type length differences.

This little upgrade is going to take a while; sounds like the best 
approach is to load a new box, shut down the dbms to connections and 
dump/pipe it over, then physically swap the machines.

Thanks.

-- 
--
Karl Denninger
karl at denninger.net