In this guide I’ll show a ‘working’ method to upgrade from MySQL Server 5.1 to 5.5 on a Windows Server 2008 R2 machine. In this case MySQL Server 5.1 was installed by the Microsoft Web Platform Installer some time ago, however this version doesn’t deliver very good performance (and its horribly outdated!) so it was time to get it replaced.

The good chaps at MySQL do offer a guide on how to do this on their website – https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/windows-upgrading.html however I hope you will find this one will serve you better.

A few points to note before we continue….

  • This guide assumes you are using a default install of MySQL Server 5.1 (as delivered by the Microsoft Web Platform Installer)
  • This guide only looks at a ‘simple’ server deployment i.e. no clustering or other funky features are in use
  • It is recommended to jump only one version at a time when going from MySQL version to version e.g. 5.1 to 5.5 (there were no 5.2, 5.3 or 5.4 versions) and then 5.5 to 5.6 and 5.6 to 5.7…
  • You can download previous versions of MySQL Server from this link – http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/ just click on the ‘Looking for previous GA versions?’ link
  • Be sure to take a backup of your databases before you attempt this guide on a production machine (see https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/backup-methods.html for some ideas on how to do this)
  • If possible run through the upgrade process a few times on a testing machine (one that you can break and no one will notice) first

So on with the guide!

Final point to note….this guide only works with migrations to 5.5 from 5.1, if going to further versions you will be missing some tables which will in turn generate error messages during the upgrade process. More information on that here http://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/54608/innodb-error-table-mysql-innodb-table-stats-not-found-after-upgrade-to-mys.

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