Upgrading Old Versions (NPM 10.7, NCM 7.3, IPAM 4.1 and VNQM 4.1)

Hello Guys, You can understand my trouble by looking at the Subject of this discussion topic. I need to upgrade Old Orion product Versions. But they all are not supported by Solarwinds.

Need your help and suggestions to follow the best way to upgrade them.

Below is the complete details of the environment.

1. Existing Environment

Main Polling Engine Server - @008 R2 on Physical.

APE (4 in count) - VM 2008 R2

Database Server - 2008 R2 OS and 2008 R2 SQL on Physical.

NPM - 10.7

NCM - 7.3

IPAM - 4.1

VNQM - 4.1

NTM - 2.0

2.Upgrading to

Main Polling Engine Server - 2016 on Vritual

Database Server - 2016 OS and 2016 SP1 SQL on Virtual.

APE (4 in Count) - 2016 OS on Virtual

NPM - 12.3

NCM - 7.8

IPAM - Latest

VNQM - Latest

NTM - Latest

We can't afford to loose data, but risks can be highlighted. Please suggest me the best way of achieving this.

Find more posts tagged with

Accepted answers

All comments

mesverrum

Start here

Product Upgrade Advisor | SolarWinds Customer Portal

It complained to me when I put sql 2008 in there, so you'd have to do some digging to figure out which step in the process you would need to move the databases, you will likely have to step through at least 1 or two intermediate sql versions.

Are you planning to end up in a vm as part of this process or are you leaving orion on bare metal? Technically you wouldn't really have to upgrade the old server at all, p2v everything into a vm right away and take snapshots as you go, that way if any phase of the upgrade fails you can roll them back easily and pick up from that point with very low risk. Worst case scenario you kill the vm's, power the old servers back on and you are right back in business.

Basically you upgrade everything in place until the highest version supported by windows 2008/sql 2008, The matrix online doesn't show 2008 anymore so you may have to dig through release notes to figure out where that transition was, or just keep running the installers until one of them complains. Then figure out what is the highest version of sql that is supported on those versions (it'll probably be 2014 but definitely not a straight jump to 2017). Then you back up the database, install that next version of sql, restore the db to the new instance, maybe do an in place server os upgrade when you get to where server 2008 isn't supported as well, then continue to upgrade the software. To be honest after I got it all up and looking reasonable I would probably then take an extra step to migrate away from the vm that had been through all these p2v and upgrades into a completely fresh set of vm's that had no p2v baggage, install the latest releases of orion and SQL on those and when I got done with everything just restore my final version of the database into the clean sql server then connect my virgin orion server to that db instance. That last bit is not an absolute requirement but would give me some peace of mind not having worry about leftover crud from old versions of windows and such.

dgsmith80

Hi nks7892 I have a customer who is currently facing a similar upgrade experience. The biggest problem you have is that 10.7 isn't compatible with Server 2016 so you can't migrate directly, you are going to have to perform stepped upgrades first and then migrate.

The upgrade advisor is a bit of a nightmare when you're coming from that far back, can I just confirm are you running SP1 on your 2008 R2 machine? And if not are you able to upgrade that? The reason I ask is that NPM 12.0.1 needs 2008 R2 SP1 as a minimum, and if you can get to 12.0.1 then you can use the All-In-One installer from there.

Cheers

- David Smith (dgsmith80 )

Kenson - SolarWinds Authorized Partner

Training, Licenses & Professional Services

dgsmith80

If you can get your servers to 2008 R2, you can perform these steps:

Then install the latest version on your new 2016 server, and the Config Wizard will be able to upgrade it all.

Hope this helps, but if you can't get to SP1, then maybe we can look at something else.

nks7892

Thankyou Very Much for all your advise, this is really helpful.

nks7892

Hi Dave, Let me check the SP version. Thanks for all this much of work you did on your side to get me out of this situation. This will definitely help me.

I will check at my end as you suggested.

nks7892

Hi Dave I have checked the SP version.

On Main Polling Engine it is 2008 R2 SP1 and APE's are on 2008 R2 only.

SQL is also on 2008 R2 but MSSQL version is 2012 SP4.

dgsmith80

Hi nks7892 - that is good news, you can follow my upgrade plan as above without any issues. I would even suggest you goto IPAM 4.5.1 as that works with Core 2017.1 and 2008 R2 SP1.

The only caveat for your upgrade plan will be that once your Primary Polling Engine is complete, you will NOT be able to upgrade your APE's, but I wouldn't bother with that anyway I would just look to migrate onto the new servers as soon as possible.

Hope that helps, but if you want any extra help just shout.