This Q&A was previously posted on the Stack Exchange Network of websites.
This content is licensed under the Creative Commmons Attribution-Sharealike (CC BY-SA) license. As the author of these answers, this archive serves as a canonical location for permalinks, which will outlive Stack Overflow. See all my answers by looking at the Stack Exchange post category.
Is it possible to change the family_guid in MSSQL?
Question
So I have a bit of a problem with some databases I’m trying to migrate to amazon RDS
We have about 20 Databases that are all derivatives of others that all share the same family_guid because they are based on backups of others. The problem is that amazon will not allow you to restore a DB that has the same family_guid of another even if they are two separate databases. This is where my question comes in, Is it possible to change the guid or am I out of luck and will need to do some exports/imports on these databases.
asked 2016-08-24 by Hunter Griffin
Answer
The family_guid is a unique ID that is generated when a database is created. It remains the same, even when a database is restored.
You generally see the family_guid when querying msdb.dbo.backupset or using the RESTORE HEADERONLY command.
My understanding is that this is a completely static value and cannot be changed.
If you need to “change” it, I’d suggest creating a new database, then exporting/importing. You might try creating a BACPAC to export the schema & data, so that you can import it into a new database.
answered 2016-08-25 by Andy Mallon