Lotus Domino R7 Upgrade Query

[TigerDivision]

Hi all!

We currently are using Lotus Domino 6.5.5 and I am planning to upgrade it to ver 7.0.2 once this is released late next month. However our clients would still remain at ver 6.5
My query is this. Can I upgrade our server to ver 7.0.2 and still have my clients at 6.5?
Can I upgrade my Domino Directory to the latest design and keep my users' mailbox templates at ver 6.5? These would then be upgraded once the clients are upgraded to ver 7.

Thanks
Pierre

 

[pmonett]

On the contrary, you are doing exactly what Lotus suggests in its white papers : upgrade the server first, then, if everything goes well, upgrade the clients.
I do hope you have a test server where you have validated that all the apps run without any trouble on the new version.
Other than that, you're doing the right thing. Be ready with a backup though, in case the server upgrade breaks something.
Keeping your user's mailboxes in their current template should not be difficult since the R7 version should have another name. Once the upgrade is done, before launching the server use a Notes client to check locally that the R7 mail template does not have the same template name as your current version. If it does, change that name by adding "R7" at the end and you'll be able to upgrade the mail files at your convenience.

Pascal.

 

[TigerDivision]

Thanks Pascal for your comments!

Pierre

 

[pmonett]

You're very welcome.

 

[brazinhodiniz]

Hi Pmonett,

I want to upgrade from R5 TO R7 CAN YOU PLEASE EMAIL MR THE PROCEDURE TO DO SO, I ALSO WANT MY NAMES.NSF AND ID FILES
MIGRATED TO NEW DOMINO R7.

Thanks

 

[pmonett]

You should start another thread for that.

The upgrade procedure is theoretically simple : upgrade the servers, test the applications, upgrade the clients and you're done.

Except that this is supposed to be done for every release. I have never done a double-release upgrade, so I would go there with a little bit more caution. Ideally, you would perform a primary upgrade from R5 to R6.5.4, test the apps, upgrade the clients, and start over again. I realize that this is a bit time-consuming.

A shorter, but riskier procedure, would be to take a test server, ghost an image of the production mail server and plonk it on it, then setup a few test clients with the server on a dedicated LAN that does not communicate with the outside.

In this environment, you could upgrade the test server directly to R7.x, check that the clients can still access the server (which they normally should, Lotus just doesn't guarantee it), then upgrade the clients. I f all works well, you can then buy a parachute and try it on the production environment - after having made a complete backup, of course.

The real sticky with the above procedure is that I do not know if the tools that are integrated with a server upgrade can update mail and names.nsf file in two hops. You might have quite an issue there, and I think you'll be forced to upgrade the server in two steps anyway - even if you get away with only one upgrade for the clients.

Pascal.


I've got nothing to hide, and I'd very much like to keep that away from prying eyes.