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How to Migrate Horizon View Composer Database to a New Server

In this short article I will briefly go through the steps required to migrate your VMware Horizon View Composer database from an old server (ServerOld) to a new server (ServerNew). The assumption is that both databases run Microsoft SQL Server however the general idea stands.

Firstly you probably want to do this out of hours because there will be a short period where the composer won’t be able to recompose VMs which could potentially lead to a shortage of VMs for users to log in to.

  1. Disable provisioning on your pools
  2. Log-on to ServerOld and take the database offline (Don’t detach! If for some reason the new server isn’t as ready as you thought it was or the restore fails then you can put this database back online quickly)
  3. Log-on to ServerNew and create a new database. Restore the back-up you just took
  4. On the View Composer server, open up the Data Sources (ODBC) tool
  5. Click the System DSN tab
  6. Click Configure
  7. Here you want to change the Server from ServerOld to ServerNew. You may need to change the SQL authentication type if there’s a difference between ServerOld and ServerNew. In my case I had to change from SQL authentication to Integrated Windows authentication.
  8. That’s it! Re-enable provisioning on your pools and you should be all set. Make sure you do a few tests to confirm things are as they should be (logging on to pools, logging off, refreshing, recomposing, etc)