As Gomez continued working to build the new server, he ran into a few little terrors caused by the special-ness of the software. In order to move the software to a newer version of Windows Server, he must also move the database to a newer version of Microsoft SQL Server and upgrade the repository software. I fear it does not go without saying that migrating to newer versions comes with their own set of goblins and ghouls.

First, Gomez setup the Windows Server and configured its settings for the network. Then he installed the latest versions of Microsoft SQL Server and the repository software. The easy part is done; now, time it is for the real horror show.

Gomez transferred the files from the old server to the new server. He used a special migration tool to transfer the database over and into the new version. The tool updated the database data so it would work on the newer version of Microsoft SQL Server. It took from dusk ’til dawn for the transfer to complete, and when it did finish, there were several new errors of terror!

Gomez reviewed the log files to see what went wrong, but nothing looked out of place. Is it a ghost in the machine? It was not until he found the update tools super-hidden log files that he verified that the data did transfer correctly, at least as far as what the tool was supposed to do. No ghouls here! However, Gomez did discover some old pieces of data were not in the correct fields. Hmm . . . Gomez wrote a script to fix the fields on the old server. He also rolled back to a snapshot before the transfer and spent another day running the tool on the database to find any other errors.

Gomez repeated this process to script fixes for the errors, rolling back to snapshot, and start the day-long transfer process all over again. Finally, after two weeks of toil and TLC, Gomez had the database transferred without errors. And not a single terror!

Gomez ran the repository software update tool to update the database data and files into the newer format of its latest version. The conversion ran for about two hours before it hit an error and stopped. Gomez looked high and low through code to find the little terror. After a few hours of research, he realized the tool he had been using is now out of date for the new version! Gomez was trying to update from ten versions back to current. A-ha! Gomez looked up the process for each version and confirmed his sneaking suspicion, each version had its own update tool. Gomez ran all ten tools in order— each tool taking about a half a day to run. It took an entire week to make it through the process but finally, Gomez was done!

After days of freights and nights of terror, Gomez stood proud! He defeated the beast! And what luck— Lurch, too, was satisfied with the results!

But after double double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble, versions replaced and code re-written— it turns out Gomez’s newly working project has been stricken!

“Phase it out!” croaks Lurch, “Make some room— for something new— something we need!”