Downgrade SQL Server from Enterprise to Developer edition in an Availability Group

Question

I will be transitioning some non-production SQL environments from Enterprise to Developer edition over the next few months. I'm pretty settled on the procedure I will be using, which is laid out in this blog post: Downgrading SQL Server Editions

I have not been able to find any information specific to any special precautions needed when doing this in an environment with Availability Groups. We have a 2 node Synchronous commit AG. Considering we are going from Enterprise to Developer, I am not concerned with Enterprise only features being an issue. My assumed workflow will be:

1. Downgrade the secondary first according to the blog post above, make sure everything is synchronized afterwards.
2. Fail over to the secondary(now on developer edition)
3. Downgrade the old primary, and make sure db's are synced up.

It's essentially the same process I use for rolling patches and upgrades, but not sure if there are special considerations for downgrading editions... Anyone have any issues doing this?

Answer 1

Given that, by definition, that only happens in non-production environments, I doubt any one else has tried it. As always, a side-by-side migration is safer than any procedure involving uninstalling and reinstalling SQL Server.

Remember, cattle, not pets. If you have the capability to easily create a new cluster and deploy an AG on it, that procedure will satisfy a large number of operational scenarios, including this one.