The "Easy Button" has arrived with the December 2018 install of NAM (and other Solarwinds modules)

It was time to upgrade my NPM environment to a new version.

I'd already migrated everything off 2012 to 2016, including moving the SolarWinds Orion database to a new SQL 2016 solution.

I downloaded the NAM installer to my Main Instance and ran it.

It did all the expected checks, found no problems, and upgraded the main instance easily, with no additional input from me.

Then it opened up the Web Console automatically and went straight to the My Orion Deployment page. It asked me if I wanted it to upgrade all of my APE's? I said "YES!"

And it did it. One button. Six APE's checked automatically for compatibility and problems. No action was required on my part. It went through the upgrade process on all APE's for me:

And it completed them successfully:

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rschroeder

I did not have to run the Configuration Wizard on any of the APE's.

The upgrades on all the APE's ran automatically as part of the upgrade on the Main Instance. I did not have to RDP into any of the APE's for this upgrade to happen and succeed.

A thing of beauty!

Everything after the initial main instance's update happens from the Web Console on your own PC--no need to RDP into any of the SolarWinds servers after the installer is run on the Main Instance. Just go to My Orion Deployment and one click starts (and finishes) the simultaneous push and upgrade of all the APE's.

SolarWinds even put hot links into the page that starts the APE's upgrades, to RDP to any of the APE's if you happened to want (or need) to visit them for any reason. I didn't want to, and didn't need to.

It just worked.

Ahhhh.

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jm_sysadmin

This includes no configuration wizard on each?

rschroeder

I did not have to run the Configuration Wizard on any of the APE's.

The upgrades on all the APE's ran automatically as part of the upgrade on the Main Instance. I did not have to RDP into any of the APE's for this upgrade to happen and succeed.

A thing of beauty!

It just worked.

Ahhhh.

serena

rschroeder wrote:
It was time to upgrade my NPM environment to a new version.
I'd already migrated everything off 2012 to 2016, including moving the SolarWinds Orion database to a new SQL 2016 solution.
I downloaded the NAM installer to my Main Instance and ran it.
It did all the expected checks, found no problems, and upgraded the main instance easily, with no additional input from me.
Then it opened up the Web Console automatically and went straight to the My Orion Deployment page. It asked me if I wanted it to upgrade all of my APE's? I said "YES!"
And it did it. One button. Six APE's checked automatically for compatibility and problems. No action was required on my part. It went through the upgrade process on all APE's for me:
And it completed them successfully:

It's BEAUTIFUL!!!!!! Thank you for sharing your centralized upgrade Rick, it makes me so happy to see it out in the wild.

rschroeder

Special note about the Easy Button. The current release of NAM at 2018-12-18 is not activating all modules (NCM, NTA, HA, etc.) beneath NAM when NAM is licensed and activated. One must still manually activate the licenses at the portal, copy their license keys one at a time, and paste them into the License Manager within SolarWinds Orion to activate them. Then one must log out and log back into Orion web console to see the modules working.

I lost several hours of access to NCM, NTA, etc. this morning when the previously-installed 30-day trial license (used to upgrade NAM in the RC2 mode) expired. I had previously opened several tickets about the alerts I was receiving--that the license was expiring soon. Each time I was told that the problem was cosmetic only--that the fully-paid-for 12-month license would automatically take over once the 30-day trial license expired.

Well, that's what some SW Support folks believed. In fact, it's what is SUPPOSED to happen once the next release comes out in January of 2019. But it's not what really happened.

Instead I had no NCM, NTA, VNQM, or IPAM this morning. Not until I manually copied over their individual licenses and pasted them into License Manager. And then I had to log out and log back into SolarWinds to actually see the modules working.

A word to the wise.