Install new pollers and web server plus upgrade 8.1 to 8.5.1

rtitus

I am getting ready to install two new pollers and a web server, plus upgrade for 8.1 to 8.5.1 on my current install of Orion NPM and one poller.  I also have a SQL server. 

 

The questions that I have are:

 

From my reading I have not seen anything said that they can not be on different subnet on different routers.  Is this correct?

 

If correct, is there anything special in the install and setup that would make the job easier?

 

Would it make sense to bring up the new pollers on 8.5.1 and move the current nodes to the new pollers before upgrading the one poller and Orion NPM?  Will the new pollers work with the old version on Orion NPM until I upgrade it?

 

So the real question is what is the suggested install and upgrade path I should take?  Then what about the web server part?

 

One more note, I need to do the upgrade to solve a problem that I am having as per SolarWinds.

Network_Guru

First of all, don't feel pressured to upgrade to a newer version, just because Solarwinds recommended it.

As for the upgrade path, as soon as you add additional pollers, you are in for a world of hurt (compared to a single all-in-one server).
If you are going to upgrade, then I suggest upgrading the single server to 8.5.1 with SP 1 before anything else.
Make sure everything works & is running stable before thinking about adding the other 2 pollers (let it run for a week).
Try all applications, including Mapmaker.

All pollers MUST be running the same version before anything will work.
Each time you install a new poller, you must shutdown all pollers beforehand (no monitoring on your network while doing the install).
If you want to move nodes to another polling engine, once again, all pollers must be stopped while you run the load balancing tool in the "Monitor Polling Engines" app.

It is MUCH easier upgrading a single server than 3 servers at once.

As for the web engine, I'm sorry but I have no experience with that.