BCM400 4.0 time to upgrade to 6.0 2

[Trustel]

I'm going to be upgrading a BCM400 4.0 to 6.0 and was wondering about the approximate time needed for the maintenance window. The system has 50 7324 / 7310's, 4 analog on ATA's, 1 PRI, 4 Analog Trunks, 8 IP softphones, and 8 Unified Messaging.

I've never been a fan of upgrades especially the database migration. Would it be cleaner and potentially less problematic to skip the data migration and just rekey the install? Phones are all laid out pretty much the same.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Rustymutt]

4 to 6 shouldn't take more than an hour. Good luck.
I'm not aware of any issues with this. Make sure you backup the 4 first. And get your hands on the latest SU for 6 and install it after the upgrade.

 

[Rustymutt]

My mistake, I see were this is 400 release 4 to BCM450. You will have some hardware to change out also. maybe 4 hour window, in case you hit a snag. Good Luck.

 

[snowman50]

If you have another spare 200 or 400 chassis you can put the bcm450 BFT ,hard drive, Cic, parts into this first.
Boot it up.
Then do all you programming.
When you are finished you can then transfer the parts to the base unit on site.
Basically all you will be keeping is the Chassis and power unit.
The BFT, Hard drive and CIC is new.
Therefore your down time will be on how long it takes you to take out the system and put in the new parts.

 

[Trustel]

Thanks for all the replies. I kind of figured it would take at least 4hrs to upgrade the existing box. On the flip side the customer is considering buying a new 450 and just reusing the MBM's. I like the idea of programming a new system while leaving the original intact then you're covered in case something were to go horribly wrong; but that would never happen with Nortel.

 

[SS67]

We have done a ton of these migrations. When dealing with 25 or fewer sets you are better off to hand pack the database into a second unit with all the new hardware.

When ever you are running the data migration manager to pull the data out of the old unit that system is out of service. That can be 2 to 4 hours depending on how many messages are in the BCM. Have the end users empty thier mailboxes prior to data migration manager. If you have spare modules that match exactly what you have in the existing BCM you can restore the data into the 450 and then just swap the cabinets. You must have the new 450 up and running with exact modules or the migration manager will not work 100% on the restore. Pay close attention to dip switches on the modules in the expansion cabinet.

NCSS, NCDS, for CS1000 and BCM

 

[danthephoneman]

I agree with snowman, I have done about 10 of these in the past 2 months and you are better off programming in another chassis and then swapping hardware. I tried using the DMM on my first one and it ended up being a very long night.

good luck!