Back up, uninstall, restore — the safe way to upgrade SQL Server in place.

The SQL Server setup wizard upgrades the engine. It doesn't back up the rest.

An in-place upgrade wizard replaces the SQL Server binaries — it has no concept of your linked servers, SSIS packages, or SSRS content, and no way to know if you've backed any of it up before letting you uninstall.

What it needs.

Three scripts, and one step you do yourself.

1. Back up — Start-SQLUpgradeBackup.ps1Captures all six components below into a timestamped backup set, and writes a summary file that proves the backup completed.
2. Uninstall — Start-SQLUpgradeUninstall.ps1Checks for that summary file first and refuses to proceed without it, then removes the old SQL Server version via its own setup.exe.
3. Install the new versionNot automated — you run the new SQL Server setup yourself, matching the original instance name.
4. Restore — Start-SQLUpgradeRestore.ps1Replays the backup set onto the reinstalled instance, confirming each component individually before touching it.

The bundled launcher, Start-InplaceUpDate.cmd, presents these as a numbered menu and self-elevates via UAC — needed because a mapped network drive used to start the tool becomes unreachable once the process elevates.

Six components, one backup set.

A dependency check, and proof of backup.

Before touching anything, the backup step scans for ODBC DSNs, OLE DB providers, Visual Studio/SSDT installs, other SQL instances, and Windows services that depend on this one — anything high-severity stops and asks before continuing.

The uninstall step then requires a path to a completed backup set and checks for its summary file; without one, it warns loudly and asks for an explicit override rather than proceeding quietly. Once confirmed, it reads the currently installed features from the registry, stops the SQL Server, Agent, SSAS, and SSRS services, and runs the vendor's own setup.exe /ACTION=Uninstall — with optional, separately confirmed cleanup of leftover files, registry entries, and a reboot at the end.

Nothing runs until you say yes to it.

Once the new SQL Server version is installed, the restore step connects to it and walks through the same six components — each one only restored if you confirm it individually. T-SQL scripts are replayed batch by batch, tracking success and failure counts rather than stopping at the first error; SSISDB is restored as a full database; SSRS content is written back into the catalog directly; SSAS databases are restored per database via AMO. A restore summary is written out at the end, same as the backup step.

There's no automated undo. The backup set is the rollback path.

If an uninstall or restore fails partway, there's no automatic recovery — you re-run the affected restore steps, or reinstall SQL Server again and restore from the same backup set. That's a real limitation, not an oversight: nothing here takes a VM snapshot or offers a one-click "undo the uninstall."

The actual safety net is upstream of that. The tool won't let an uninstall proceed without a provable, completed backup, and every destructive action is confirmed individually rather than run unattended — so the backup set you're left holding is always complete and current, which is what makes a manual restore a reliable rollback path in practice.

Run each phase from the command line.

# Phase 1 - back up everything before touching the install
.\Start-SQLUpgradeBackup.ps1 -SqlInstance 'SERVER01\SQL2019' -InstanceName 'SQL2019'

# Phase 2 - uninstall, pointing at the completed backup set
.\Start-SQLUpgradeUninstall.ps1 -InstanceName 'SQL2019' -BackupSetPath 'C:\SQLUpgrade_Backup\...'

# Phase 3 - install the new SQL Server version yourself (not automated)

# Phase 4 - restore onto the reinstalled instance
.\Start-SQLUpgradeRestore.ps1 -SqlInstance 'SERVER01\SQL2019' -BackupSetPath 'C:\SQLUpgrade_Backup\...'

Individual components can be skipped on the backup side with switches like -SkipSSAS or -SkipSSRS; the uninstall step's feature list and setup path can also be overridden explicitly rather than auto-detected.

Free to use.

InplaceUpDate is released under the MIT License — no trial, no activation, same as the rest of the free tools in this suite.

Fresh install vs. in-place upgrade — and what to check afterward.