Netware 6 Upgrade 1

[sobak]

We are beginning to upgrade our network to NetWare 6 from 4.11. The first set of server’s that I have targeted for upgrading is our mail server’s since we are also going to GroupWise 6.5. My main corp. e-mail server is also holding the master replica of our network my GWIA, MTA as well as POA for my corp. office. For testing purposes I've installed 4.11 in a new tree and did an in-place upgrade to NetWare 6, I am currently running tests and so far I don't see any lingering issues, its working great.

Before I attempt the next step and upgrade my production mail server I wanted to get some opinions on how I should attack this...My network consists 250 users, One Master replica of the tree with a number of Read/Writes. I would like to keep the master replica on the mail server for ease of restore if I had to back out of the upgrade. Since the entire NDS resides on the same server that I'm upgrading all I would need to do is restore that one server and be back to where I was before the upgrade. That is unless anyone sees a problem with that.

Prior to my test upgrade, NetWare 6 had me make changes to the current test NDS. I was wondering what these changes were and would they affect my current existing 4.11 production servers if I run it on my production network? Can NetWare 4.11 and Netware 6 co-exist in the same NDS with a master replica being on the NetWare 6.0 server?

We are upgrading the entire network to NetWare 6 this year but being the only qualified person in my company to perform the upgrade, 9 servers spread out over the entire country would make me insane before I finished. I would hope that NetWare 6 is backward compatible with Netware 4.11 but I don't know the limitations. This first wave of upgrades will target three servers (all GroupWise e-mail servers). After that then I am proceeding with the GroupWise 6.5 upgrades then next wave of Netware 6 will be performed office-by-office until completed.

Does my plan have any merit or am I up for a loosing battle?

Thanks for your input.
david e
*end users are just like computers, some you can work with...others just need a simple reBOOTing to fix their problems.*

 

[Lou0686]

Hi,

First I'd like to say your off to a good start by upgrading a test server, but it is a bit different when you have other servers in the tree. Espcially across a WAN. These are the musts.

1. Verify that you have no time or communication problems before you start. NDS must be healthy.
2. NDS must be at a certain level on all the 4.11 boxes before you begin. If I am not mistaken, I think the minimum version is 7.47 (or is that for 5...hard to remember). Applying the latest service pack to all the servers will take care of most of the prerequisites.
3. The NetWare 6 CD ships with NWdeploy on it. Run this against the tree, it will point out the items that you need to take care of.
4. Verify that your DOS partitions is big enough (I would say 200MB is a comfortable number). Do a scnadisk on it before proceeding.
5. Verify that all the voluems are in good health, run Vrepair against them.
6. You should have a minimum of 10% or 1GB (whichever is larger) of free space on SYS.
7. Upgrade the server that holds the master first.
8. Run a dsreapir after upgrade and patch.
9. Verify DS is healthy before moving to the next server.

Hope this helps
Lou

 

[sobak]

Lou,

Thanks for the tips, one thing that I do preach is service packs. All of my servers are running the latest so that step is taken care of. You did mention some things that I didn't really think about that will come in handy.

Thanks for your input, it will be a great value.

david e
*end users are just like computers, some you can work with...others just need a simple reBOOTing to fix their problems.*

 

[Lou0686]

Hi David,

Any time. I have done enough of these already. I actually upgraded 5 NW 5 servers to 6 in one weekend. The most important part of an upgrade, in my opinion is the prep. There are others steps that I like to perform, for instance:
Verify you have a good backup, if the servers are mirrored, break the mirror. I normally Server Magic the server onto new hardware first and then do the In-Place upgrade. This way if the upgrade fails you still a original server intact. If you have even one spare server you can play what I like to call "the shell game". (Servers A, B, C, etc... and Z is the spare). Server Magic the server from A to Z, upgrade.....from B to A, upgrade...and so on.

Lots of luck to you
Lou

 

[Iamit]

Lou0686
Please tell me more about Server Magic and the steps you took to upgrade your servers. I have a handful of NW5 I need to upgrade to NW6 in the near future. I like the idea of copying everything to the new server and then do "in-place" upgrade. Did you upgrade 5 to 5.1 first or straight to 6.0?

Thanks

 

[Lou0686]

Hey again David,

Server Magic (by PowerQuest) is a great piece of software. I use v 4.0.

First off when you use the Server Magic solution, you do not have to do anything to the new hardware except to asemble it. What you do is create a remote boot disk from the Server Magic CD to boot the new hardware. Here are the steps.

1. Take source server off the network and attach it to the new hardware using a crossover cable.
2. Prep the source server's Startup with the new disk drives of the destination server. This is so you don't go nuts trying to figure out why the server didn't come up on the destination server when your ready to bring it up. Also copy the driver to the NWserver directory. Don't forget to prep the server as mentioned before. Scnadisk the DOS partition, Vrepair, etc...
3. Create the Remote Boot Disk off the Server Magic CD. (Hint: Use a Windows 9.X workstation to create the disk). When creating the disk, it will ask you for an IP address, if the source server is 10.10.10.1, assign the disk 10.10.10.2. It will also ask you for the Network card you will be using on the dest. server. The drivers that come with server magic are limited, I like to use the 3C90x card and have never had issues with it. After you create the disk, copy the win9.x Himem.sys and (damn forgot the name of the other, but you know which one I mean, the memory management one). Load as much as possible into high memory or the copy will fail at about 70% or so. There are technotes on PowerQuest's web site about the settings for the boot disk.
4. Bring the source server on line with all and I mean all uneccessary items remarked out of the autoexec. Load Smagic on it and yes dismount all volumes when it asks you to.
5. You will need to play around with it a while to get used to the menu and where everthing is located.
6. Boot the destination server with the boot disk. A connection will be estables between the 2.
7. Copy the DOS partition first. Next the SYS volume. NOTE: If your volumes do not span across disks, you can copy the whole NetWare partition at once.
8. Next, disconnect the cable, bring the dest. server up, expand the NetWare partition so that it takes up all the new space.
9. Copy the other volumes.
10. Upgrade and Patch.

Lou

 

[zowie2]

You might want to check to make sure that SSL, PKI. and NICI are properly configured. I've heard that an NW6 upgrade can bomb if these have problems. There's a utility at Novell called PKIDIAG that can help you.

 

[Iamit]

Lou,

Thank you so much for the details. One more question. Do you have to configure the RAID on the detination server first?

Thanks

 

[Lou0686]

David,

Yes that is one of the things you have to do in the preparation of the hardware. If you don't, Server Magic will see mutiple drives available and most likely all too small to transfer data to.

Lou