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Upgrading to NPM 12.1. Any expectations, surprises, pointers? What to do first?

I am running Server 2008 R2 SP1 for the main Orion and NTA pollers and have a Server 2008 R2 (not sure if it's SP1) for my SQL server. I am upgrading:

NPM 12.0.1

VNQM 4.2.4

SAM 6.2.4

NCM 7.5

NTA 4.2.0

to NPM 12.1, SAM 6.4, NCM 7.6, NTA 4.2.2 & VNQM 4.4.

I do know I will need to create backups/snapshots and have my .NET Framework upgraded to 4.6.2 before anything. I have downloaded the offline installers for NTA and NPM which I was informed includes all the other module upgrades as well. Do I install the NPM upgrade first then install the upgrade for my NTA server or should I do the NTA server first? Is there anything I need to do on my SQL database side besides create backups? My Orion and NTA servers are VMs, will simple snapshots suffice as a backup on their ends? Any other obstacles or surprises I should expect in this process? I'm trying to have a smooth transition. Please advise.

Thank you.

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Accepted answers

kange0010

So the upgrade went smoother than I expected. This is what I did:

1) I created backups first. Full backups of my database, VMs, and even took Snapshots. I may have backed up more than I needed, but I wanted to be sure just in case.

2) I shut down all services in the Orion Service Manager on my main server.

3) Logged into my NTA server and installed the NTA upgrade first.

4) Went back into my main server and installed the NPM 12.1 upgrade package; this package included all the latest modules for this version of NPM.

5) That's it! I may have restarted the servers which was probably not necessary, but I don't remember.

I also did double check the front end to be sure the latest versions were installed. I also checked jobs, reports, everything I would normally do on a daily basis to see if I would receive errors but everything was good. I checked Programs and features in the control panel of both my servers (NTA and the main one) to see that the latest versions were installed.

Takeaways:

1) During my install of NPM on the main server I would get interrupted because some services would automatically run in the Orion Service Manager. Again, all services were stopped beforehand, but for some strange reason certain ones would startup during installation which would cause a stoppage of the install. After numerous attempts I would get the same result. Eventually I figured out that these services had dependencies that needed to be turned off too. In Services.msc of the main server I looked for these exact same services that were in the Orion Service Manager. The services that would run automatically, I would look at their dependencies and make sure I disabled or turned them off as well; this allowed for the installation to complete since all services in the Orion Service Manager would now remain stopped and not start automatically.

2) In my NTA server during installation of the NTA package, the upgrade would show only 4.2 and not 4.2.2, however it did recognize that I had a lower version so I proceeded with the install. After completion of the install in program and features in the control panel in the "Name" column, it would show "SolarWinds Orion NetFlow Traffic Analyzer 4.2." What I needed to do was take a look at the "Version" column which showed 4.2.3145.0. This version was the same as what was showed in my main server which is the version that corresponds to NTA 4.2.2.

All in all, this was a great experience and hope this helps others.

All comments

er.vansh17091

Hi,

I believe you are going to upgrade NPM 12.1 to 12.2. while doing upgrade first of all you will have to take backup of database and VM snapshot. In order to upgrade you have to upgrade NPM first, when you will start upgrade in the mid of upgrade there will be options to select modules including NTA. Offline installation is very simple but please ensure about RC versions.

dgsmith80

Personally I would upgrade the NTA DB server first and then your Orion. Should be fine

kange0010

I'll give this a shot and see how it goes. Thank you.

wlouisharris

We did a recent upgrade from 12.1 to 12.2 in our QA environment. The upgrade was a lot easier than going from 11.x to 12.x and 12.0 to 12.1. The "gotcha" for us is the requirement that you need to use a non-domain admin account to run the installation. Note, you do not need this to run the configuration wizard. The upgrade threw errors until we ran with a local admin account we created. One huge step with this upgrade is the online installer will out and grab all the fix packs that it needs. My other recommendation(highly) - if you can migrate to server 2016 or at least 2012 it will help. We have noticed a number of registry and installation issues with Windows 2008 R2 and Solarwinds.

kange0010

Does it matter which server I update first regarding the .NET Framework?

kange0010

So far so good. I updated the .NET Framework on my main orion server first. I will begin upgrading my NTA server .NET framework next.

kange0010

So the upgrade went smoother than I expected. This is what I did:

1) I created backups first. Full backups of my database, VMs, and even took Snapshots. I may have backed up more than I needed, but I wanted to be sure just in case.

2) I shut down all services in the Orion Service Manager on my main server.

3) Logged into my NTA server and installed the NTA upgrade first.

4) Went back into my main server and installed the NPM 12.1 upgrade package; this package included all the latest modules for this version of NPM.

5) That's it! I may have restarted the servers which was probably not necessary, but I don't remember.

Takeaways:

All in all, this was a great experience and hope this helps others.