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Questions about using the "Using the improved standalone installer"

Background: I'm planning on upgrading NPM from 12.0.0 to 12.1 and I have a single app server. If I use the "Product Upgrade Advisor" (https://customerportal.solarwinds.com/support/product-upgrade-advisor) I get a list of about 7 separate upgrades to do. I'm not upgrading every component (SAM, NCM, IPAM, etc) to the latest versions because I'm on Windows 2008 R2 SP1 and I'm not sure (pretty sure) everything isn't supported on this since NPM 12.1 is the last version to support it. Then I start seeing this link from several upgrade documents stating, essentially: "if you have NPM 12.0 or SAM 6.2.4 and are upgrading products, use the 'Improved Standalone Installer!" which links to this page: (Using the improved standalone installer for product upgrades and installations - SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC. Help and Sup… ).

Questions:

1. The installer docs make it look like the "Improved Installer" is just the "built - in" installer that now comes with NPM 12.0 or SAM 6.2.4 inside the zipped downloaded install bundle file. Is this true or is it a separate exe/download?

2. From the "Improved Installer" docs, it looks like all it does is do some pre-checks of the system, then runs the same type of logic run by the "Product Upgrade Advisor" to give you an upgrade path. It appears it doesn't actually install any the upgrades for you to get to X version, it just is a "checker and recommender" for what to install, in what order. True/false?

3. Does it offer the same upgrade paths as the Upgrade Advisor? If not, is there one "more to be trusted/newer/more updated" than the other?

I feel the improved installer would be more trusted since it's running and checking my environment. The Upgrade Advisor (in the past) seemed to have some issues with my OS and/or DB versions and sometimes told me "yeah, we ignored the OS/DB version in this analysis...here's your upgrade path you asked for... maybe it's not supported so yeah you read up on that your own time bub". I have no idea where the old "upgrade charts" went, and I kinda don't care, but it was my only "manual validation" over the newer upgrade suggestion tools.

Yes, I probably could just run the installer and see what happens, but I don't want to just run an installer on only prod server just to see what happens.

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improved standalone installer

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Accepted answers

serena

Questions:

Answer: The "improved installer" referenced in that document is the installer that comes in the NPM 12.0 zip.

Answer: True. It runs pre-checks and gives you the upgrade path that is the same as the "Product Upgrade Advisor" only with the additional benefit that it's look at the system you're about to run it on so it has more relevant/accurate information.

3. Does it offer the same upgrade paths as the Upgrade Advisor? If not, is there one "more to be trusted/newer/more updated" than the other?

Yes, I probably could just run the installer and see what happens, but I don't want to just run an installer on only prod server just to see what happens.

Answer: you're right, the installer is the more accurate one because it has access to your actual environment. When you get around to using the 12.2 installer let me know your thought comparing the 2 install experiences!

All comments

superfly

I recently upgraded all my Solarwinds products. I went from NPM 11.0.1 to 12.1. I also upgraded NCM, IPAM, UDT, VNQM & NTA. I didn't download a separate installer. But the installer that came with each download, did not include an "upgrade advisor" section. I followed the one from the Solarwinds website. I'm still on Windows 2008 R2 SP1 and was able to install the latest version of everything I have. I also installed SRM and VIM.

I'm now in the process of upgrading the OS and moving the SQL database off the 2008 environment.

serena

Questions:

Answer: The "improved installer" referenced in that document is the installer that comes in the NPM 12.0 zip.

3. Does it offer the same upgrade paths as the Upgrade Advisor? If not, is there one "more to be trusted/newer/more updated" than the other?

Yes, I probably could just run the installer and see what happens, but I don't want to just run an installer on only prod server just to see what happens.

tigger2

Actually, since you posted about comparing installer experiences.... . My 2 cents...

I just upgraded from 6.2.4 -> 6.4.0 and the "new installer" kinda caught me by surprise. I downloaded just the "Solarwinds-Orion-SAM-6.4-OfflineInstaller.exe" and when it ran it basically wanted to upgrade all the Orion modules I had to the latest version (and hotfixes too, like HF1 for NPM 12.1) and I didn't get a choice to say "no" to any of it other than to a a list of separate products (like Engineers toolset) that I'm betting are not using the Orion Platform framework. It appears its an "all or nothing" type of upgrade, and I just planned only upgrading SAM and NCM. Since I didn't want to update everything, I tried the "SAM online installer" (Solarwinds-Orion-SAM.exe) and it also wanted to upgrade everything but wouldn't run after the product check because it had issues with my environment (I think it was my OS is too old for the products it wanted to upgrade to. I'm still on Win 2008 R2), so I bounced back to the offline install I had. So, if anything, the online and offline installers may have some test/diagnostics differences, with the offline installer working better on my old system.

Also: My first attempt of just attempting to upgrade everything using the offline installer had an error (an a little unhappy robot ) due to an incompatible (or the same?) version of Product Adviser already installed on my system. Here's the error:

"Ooops...we detected a problem

Specified custom product/component [ACTIVEDIAGNOSTICS:1.7.0.276] or its higher version is already installed."

I uninstalled this, and the install ran perfectly from that point on. It sees like it *could* have uninstalled this by itself since it re-installed it, but I understand why it wouldn't want to just uninstall things willy-nilly. The error message was good enough to use to figure out the problem without looking around for logs and other diagnostic junk, so that's a plus.

It *was* a nicer install than I was expecting though and I read up on some Thwack posts and it appears that the "all or nothing" approach is to make sure everything is compatible, I also assume to eventually not need the Product Upgrade Adviser.

serena

" a list of separate products (like Engineers toolset) that I'm betting are not using the Orion Platform framework. " <-- actually these are products that you don't have installed on your system. This list is provided for 2 reasons: 1. either you have the license for this product and just haven't installed it yet. in this case, you'll be able to install it all in one go without having to run another installer. 2. you don't have a license for this product, and perhaps want to evaluate it to see what problems it can solve for you.

What issues did it show in the environment when you ran the SAM online installer? I'm curious because my expectation is that the online & offline installer experience should be nearly identical.

You are absolutely right! The upgrade all or nothing approach is to erase these complicated compatibility issues that our customers run into and eventually eliminate the need entirely for the product upgrade advisor.

Thank you very much for taking the time to send me your thoughts

tigger2

For "Issues with online installer vs. offline installer" question: I don't have anything definitive I can copy/paste and I was in a rush because I was having issues but what I recall was the *offline* installer seemed to have more "failed" checks (tests that were red), so it refused to proceed further than the tests page. The *online* installer just said "hey, I'm going to install this extra stuff" and had a few warning tests. I think these warnings were about the OS being deprecated and that my account I was running it with was not explicitly a local admin on the server (I was using a domain account that's in a group and that group is in the local admin group on the server). Since offline had issues, I didn't bother with it after the initial install attempt I tried.

I think I download the offline installer a week (or two?) ago, and the online one I downloaded just a few days ago. Maybe there's were some new tests added since then?

tigger2

I just thoughts of a question, and maybe you could offer some insight

Scenario:

I have multiple products installed on 1 old server: NPM,SAM,NCM,UDT,and IPAM. I have everything using 1 database no a separate server

I had planned on delicenscing and uninstalling UDT,and IPAM on the existing server, and installing/relicensing each on their own, standalone servers

HOWEVER, I was planning on still using the same database as before for both of the apps (when I reinstall on the new server(s) I was simply going to point them to the existing database server)

So: I would end up with 1 server with NPM,SAM, and NCM, and 1 server with UDT, and 1 server with IPAM, all sharing the database on a separate SQl server.

The question: With the above scenario/configuration, are the assumptions below correct or am I missing something?

Assumption: Using the new installer, which wants to upgrade everything it sees to the latest supported version, if I run the installer on my

NPM,SAM, and NCM server, it will update just those 3 apps...and the database (for a major NPM update I assume some tables change).

I assume it won't detect that I have UDT and IPAM installed another servers ( i.e. it gets its information from locally installed components, not from looking at the database)

and even if it could see the other components, it couldn't upgrade them because they are on separate servers.

My assumption is that some updates to my core NPM,SAM,NCM server will/could break UDT and IPAM, and I won't have a lot of control over this because I won't be able to control the upgrade process as much as I could before ( with the individual installs)

For me, the worst case appears to be when I update the NPM server, then I always update the other servers at the same time