AVP to ASP or S8300 R5.1 question

[fondog2]

Hello to all,
We are in the process of preparing to upgrade from 8.1.3.5 to 10. In reading through the docs we see an upgrade path that seems to be very lengthy. Have any of you tried installing ASP from disk as a fresh install like you would do with AVP? We found it faster to overwrite and install fresh for AVP was faster than upgrading it. If anyone has a doc please add it.

Thank you,

 

[dialtonebone]

Upgrades from ASP R4.1 to R5 are very straightforward - I prefer the VIB patch method from CLI. No reason to get disks out as long as you are on a recent enough version - if you are on R7.1+ Aura products then underlying ASP should be new enough already to not require a disc for the hypervisor updates. You will still need to apply firmware updates via the prescribed method though.

 

[RedTech443]

There was a known bug with upgrading using SDM vs doing a fresh install, not sure if that was fixed or not. But Avaya recommended doing fresh installs from DVD to avoid this issue. If I remember correctly the issue was related to the ESXi SNMP and it did not work or caused issues with the platform.

 

[jimbojimbo]

Do not upgrade. Do a fresh install. If you upgrade it will only come back to bite you in the long run.

Avaya changed the datastore directory structure from local-server-disk to datastore1. While the current application versions support both, I would not be surprised if in the future you go to patch the ASP S8300 and suddenly find you no longer have applications running in VMware.

Also, Avaya has stated there is a non-deterministic issue if the servers were ever upgraded via CLI which may result in failure to upgrade. I agree with dialtonebone on using the CLI but Avaya insists SDM use is mandatory. I've been upgrading from 7.0 through 8.1.3.3 without problems via CLI.

 

[fondog2]

Thank you everyone. JimboJimbo I was wondering about that. We had trouble with the SDM from SMGR, found it was better to use the client instead. I plan on deploying new as we have been seeing several of the AVP US showing invalid state after unplanned power outages. I have the doc to fix that issue but hoping 10 will solve it for good.

 

[jimbojimbo]

10 will definitely solve the issue since there is no AVP Utilities with ASP S8300 R5.1. Just keep in mind alarming is different and you need to configure alarming in VMware to go directly to the SAL versus the AVP Utilities Serivceability Agent. What really sucks is having to get all new SEIDs and going through the whole registration process again.

 

[dialtonebone]

Jimbo - I've been using CLI per Avaya's documentation. SDM is not required, it's just one of a few options.