Best Practices for Etrust 7.1 to 8.1 Upgrade

[Rich1955]

I work in a banking environment with approve 30 branches and 1 main banker center..

Each branch has its own server with 7.1 installed as a admin server.

Clients within each branch look to their respective branch server for sig updates; daily scans, etc.

Branch server looks to the internet to download new signatures.


What's the best upgrade practice from 7.1 to 8.1 ?

Inplace upgrade of the admin server ?
Uninstall 7.1 from the server; reboot and do a install of 8.1 ?
Something else ?


What about the clients ?

Push 8.1 to the existing 7.1 clients ?
Uninstall 7.1 from each client and do a remote install of 8.1 ?
Something else ?

Thanks..



Rich