Recently we encountered an error message as below while doing a rename database. So, let us look at the steps that we can use to overcome the issue with this post.

The database could not be exclusively locked to perform the operation.

We were trying to rename a database in one of our lower environment as below and ended up with the error message.

ALTER DATABASE dbname MODIFY NAME = dbname_new

Steps to resolve

1. Take the database to single_user mode
2. Rename the database
3. Take the renamed database to multi_user mode

Script

ALTER DATABASE dbname SET SINGLE_USER WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE
GO
ALTER DATABASE dbname MODIFY NAME = dbname_new
GO
ALTER DATABASE dbname_new SET MULTI_USER WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE

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