We're a little behind on NCM upgrades, and plan on moving to NPM 12 next week, so we had to perform this upgrade first.
Environment:
Before: Orion Platform 2015.1.2, NCM 7.3.1, IPAM 4.3, IVIM 2.1.0, UDT 3.2.2, NPM 11.5.2, QoE 2.0, NTA 3.11.0
After: Orion Platform 2015.1.2, NCM 7.4, IPAM 4.3, IVIM 2.1.0, UDT 3.2.2, NPM 11.5.2, QoE 2.0, NTA 3.11.0
Main polling engine, plus four additional pollers, in a WAN FOE configuration. Separate SQL server
Start: 0900
Issues during upgrade:
0925: NCM7.4 installer required a server reboot (repeated for 8 of the installs -- two did not ask for a reboot)
-> installers should stop and ask the admin to kill whatever process has files open because a reboot is fairly disruptive and slows down the upgrade process.
0934: secondary app server Configuration wizard failed to access the website at the end
-> attempting to use http -- does solarwinds even test this.
-> installer/config wizard had stopped the http redirect in iis7.5 and not restarted it
0950: the additional polling engines has expired FoE licences installed on them (as well as current valid licences).
The installer for NCM 7.4 looked for expired licences instead of a valid licence for a product
Had a system down issue for 20 minutes while I was on hold with Support
Resolved this myself by removing the expired FoE licence and continuing the install process
Support called back 37 minutes after I opened the case,
NOT GOOD: licence checking in the installer should match licence checking in the running product.
1037: repeated upgrade on primary app server
(same issue with the http redirect not being restarted)
1100: repeated install on the four additional polling engines
1135: upgrade complete (average: 17.5 minutes/server)
Upgrade rating: 4/5
