Upgrading from 3.2 to 3.7.1

[emanuel]

Looking for best practices for upgrading a 3.2 installation to a 3.7.1 ( new server ).

We cannot upgrade the existing system because there is no room on this server, database is huge.  We can move the database to the new server.

is it better to install 3.2 on the new server, stop services, copy the working database in place, restart the service, make sure its okay.  Then install 3.7.1 on top of that to perform the schema update?

--- or ---

can we just install 3.7.1 on the new server, stop services, copy the data over, use the dfm backup restore command ( the monitor.db, monitor.log files ) to import and upgrade the schema?

[smoot]

You're almost certainly better off with the latter: install 3.7.1 first, then copy over and restore a backup.

[prasads]

Once the new server running 3.7.1 is all set & running fine, shut down(disable or better unistall) the DFM on the older Windows server.

Only one DFM server should be used to actively manage appliances.

[emanuel]

Pete ... our first attempt was to install the 3.7.1 fresh and copy over the database.  My mistake was I did not perform the Database Import ( dfm backup restore <database> ).  Using this method will convert the database to the current schema?  This also requires you to perform a database backup of the original and using that copy to move over to the new server.  If I understand it right today ... use the dfm database backup and restore commands to export and import the databases.

For today we did the install a fresh 3.2 on the new VM, stop the service, copied the monitor.db and .log to the ../data directory and restarted 3.2.  Worked 100%.  Then we installed 3.7.1 on top.  The database was over 1 GB in size and it took about two hours to convert.  After that, the server was running fine.

Prasad ... we have shut down the old system and a single instance is monitoring all 19 controlers.

I think we are good to go, just waiting for a few days as the backup manager continues to process snapvault schedules ... some time in the future they will explore protection manager.

Thanks!

E

[smoot]

The supported procedure is definitely "dfm backup create/dfm backup restore" and yes, that performs any needed database upgrades.  Weird things sometimes happen if you just copy the .db and .log file around.

Using a backup/restore also copies over any PA, script and scheduled report data.  Since you're coming from 3.2, there are no scheduled reports, but none the less, a backup ensures you copy over any user-created data.

If you're up and running, I guess you're OK.  Any time this doesn't work for me it never gets as far as restarting any DFM services.