Roll back if Migration fails - Groupwise 5.5 to 6.5 2

[varuniw1]

Dear All,

I am going to upgrade our old (100% reliable) Groupwise 5.5.4 system to 6.5.2 soon. I have tested it on a test network and it all seems OK. I am a bit nervous as I haven't got a roll back plan or a method.

Does anyone have any idea of how to Roll back, if all fails ? (I doubt it).

Many Thanks for any help.

Varuni
CNE

 

[FarOut]

All I would suggest that you do is get the 6.5 ugrade guide by Tay Kratzer. I have never been steered wrong when following his procedures on upgrading GW.

FarOut
V-Peace-V

 

[graver]

I recently went through the same migration. It went really smooth, it was almost scary. My contigency plan was this way. I was going from Netware 5.1 and GW 5.5.5 to Netware 6.5 and GW 6.5.2.

My procedure was as follows:

shutdown all gw agents and make a full backup to tape when that finished i ran a backup to disk as well. Because I had read that sometimes db files even when they aren't accessed have issues. I then copied gwpo.dc, gwdom.dc, mtaname, wpdomain.db, wpdomain.dc, and wphost.dc to my usb flash drive because I am completely paranoid. From there I reinstalled Netware, and then GW.

I copied all user db's, domain db's (the entire domain structure to the new box) and did an in place upgrade. One thing that was not mentioned in the guide was I wacked the following objects out of my tree (gwia,mta,webaccess) DO NOT wack anything else.

It worked like a champ. All of my users maintained the same 5.5 FID that they had therefore if you have archives you do not need to do anything to them they will be ok.

As far as fallback plan....make sure you have a complete backup of your GW 5.5, also I recommend buying Portlock Storage Manager. It is basically ghost for real OS's.

http://www.portlocksoftware.com

I hope this helps out.

Tamra Graver --CNA, Network+
*************************************
It is my job to comfort the disturbed
and disturb the comfortable..........

 

[bytehd]

Tamra, a few questions:

"From there I reinstalled Netware, and then GW"

IF you RE installed (actually NOT upgraded) then the directory would have been blown away, right?

Im going from NW 5.0 to NW 6.5 and that doesnt work
as well as 5.1. (if at all).

There is talk of double upgrading from 5.0 to 5.1,
then from 5.1 to 6.5.

Should be fun


George Walkey
Senior Geek in charge

http://www.insyncva.com

 

[LawnBoy]

We stepped straight from 5.0 to 6.5. Actually, the 5.0 server turned itself into a boat anchor overnite so we slapped 6.5 on a new box and reconstructed from tape. Even in that situation, it wasn't that bad.

As far as Groupwise our upgrade from 5.5 to 6.5 was flawless except that the wpdomain.db file was of zero length when the upgrade finished. Put a copy from the old 5.5 PO and everything was fine.

 

[bytehd]

Thats good news.
But dont the groupwise mailbox IDs NOT match the new
NDS usernames?

I want people to be able to come in the next day
and see all their mail in the new client.

when you say you reconstructed from tape,
you had another server hosting a R/W replica of
NDS and you restored just the files.

When you slapped 6.5 on the new box, it sucked over a copy of NDS from the existing server, right?

Then the mail IDs and logins matched.....

George Walkey
Senior Geek in charge

http://www.insyncva.com

 

[LawnBoy]

When you slapped 6.5 on the new box, it sucked over a copy of NDS from the existing server, right?

Yup. Luckily I was running the backups from (literally) an old user pc with NW5 on it, so I had a replica. Otherwise I'd have slit my wrists...

 

[bytehd]

Gotcha
Thanks!

forget the wrists part
just get married

George Walkey
Senior Geek in charge

http://www.insyncva.com

 

[ITsmyfault]

I think rolling back should be easy if you have disk space for both systems...
5.5 install is one place on disk, and starts via NCF files no?
Install 6.5 in a different folder (or set of them) and create alternate ncf files. Change your links if needed (if they are IP you may not need to), change paths in C1.. run the new NCF file to start the new version and see how it goes. If it blows up (it won't btw) you unload it.. and go back to old NCF file until you find issue.
this is the beauty of modular software.. it's just files in folders. I think this should work.
Meanwhle, get the Kratzer/Hinchman book on upgrading. Great tips, solid stuff & the best $30 you'll ever spend. Gregg Hinchman put in our cluster here actually. Those techniques work. We're running 6.5.2 on a 6.5.2 cluster with all the agents in protected memory. It's been rock solid.

 

[graver]

Sorry it has taken me so long to get back to this post but I have been really busy. I did a clean install of Netware 6.5 and a clean install of GW6.5. I wacked my old Netware 5.1 and GW 5.5 completely, used Tom's Root Boot to wack all partitions. ect. As I said before I copied the domain and po files to another Netware volume on my network so they retained all file attributes.

I hope this clears up some questions....It's been 5 months and GW is still goin' strong

Tamra Graver --CNA, Network+
*************************************
It is my job to comfort the disturbed
and disturb the comfortable..........

 

[FarOut]

Great to hear the upgrade went well. And thanks for posting back and letting us know. Have a great one!

FarOut
V-Peace-V

 

[bytehd]

I finished my upgrade as well.
GW 5.5 to GW 6.5 was flawless.

Nw 5.0 to NW 6.5 was not.


George Walkey
Senior Geek in charge

http://www.insyncva.com