Time efficient upgrades?

[jryker]

New to the BCM's. Working on upgrading eight of them from 5.0 to 6.0. Did one last night and it was painful to sit and wait for everything to complete. 3.5 hours. Anyone have tips or tricks they use for speeding up the process? We didn't start any of the work till the office was closed. Looking at some documentation I might be able to do some pre-work prior to starting the actual upgrade that won't effect active users. Additionally I see an option for Scheduled Updates. What is your experience with using it?

Looking forward to your feedback.

 

[Firebird Scrambler]

3.5 hours isn't that bad. Patch System updates can be scheduled, but many of us prefer to be around in case the reboot doesn't work correctly.

All the best

Firebird Scrambler
Meridian 1 / Succession and BCM / Norstar Programmer in the UK

http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidbromley

If it's working, then leave it alone!.

 

[biv343]

I copy the upgrade DVD/CD to my laptop and run it from there. Thats good for shaving about 10-15 minutes off if you're lucky. I got burned one too many times in the BCM 200/400/1000 2.X and 3.X days being halfway through an upgrade and having it say "CD read error", etc.

The only thing I schedule for application is the factory image update, as it doesn't require a reboot.

Outside of that, I plan on 3 hours for a BCM upgrade.

 

[jryker]

We have copies of the upgrade and patches all sitting on a server local to the offices with the BCM50.

Can you apply keycodes and do backups while users are still actively using the PBX?

 

[SS67]

Are we talking about 3.5 hours for a BCM 50 or 450 version 5.0 to 6.0 with no hardware changes?

APDS,ACIS,ACSS - BCM, CS1000, IPO, AURA
Shoretel Certified Engineer

 

[jryker]

SS67, yep, no hardware changes, just software on BCM50's. 5.0 to 6.0 took us 3.5 hours. Some of it could be slimmed down now that we've gone through it once. But any improvement will help when doing a couple at a time every other night.

 

[snowman50]

You can do the backups as long as it's not a call centre.
A back up will log all agents out and stop the call pilot.

The key code only takes about 2minutes to apply anyway.

Other than that I would do it step by step.
It would be more painful to factory reset backwards and start again if it goes wrong.

Backup,
Key code
Upgrade
Backup
Patches
Image

All rakes time