Closed

Closed due to inactivity. Received 21 votes with last vote on 16 Mar 2017.

Make tracking and carrying out upgrades easier in multiple module and poller environments

Tracking when upgrades are needed and then carrying in an environment with multiple modules and pollers is complex and time consuming. When you get to having 5+ modules and more than a single additional  poller it gets very hard to plan and then complete upgrades.

The following additional features will greatly help with planning and upgrading:

  • There seems to be no way to report on software versions that are installed on each server, the web interface having an matrix like the following will enable you to quickly and easily confirm that an upgrade has been correctly applied and what needs updated (even better if it hooked into the new upgrade planner):

ServerNPMNTASAMIVIMNCM
Main11.5.24.1.0 (Upgrade to 4.1.1)6.2.0 (Upgrade to 6.2.1)2.1.07.4
Additional Webserver11.5.1 (Upgrade to 11.5.2)4.1.0 (Upgrade to 4.1.1)6.2.0 (Upgrade to 6.2.1)2.1.07.4
Additional Poller11.5.24.1.0 (Upgrade to 4.1.1)6.2.0 (Upgrade to 6.2.1)2.1.07.4
Flow Storage-4.1.0 (Upgrade to 4.1.1)---

  • Downtime required to upgrade multiple modules in the same change window is huge, having to run multiple installers, configuration wizards in turn greatly increases the required time to complete the upgrade. If we could have a single installer (that's small) than would have a preflight check step of allowing you to download selected (i.e. one or all) installers and then install in a single run would be very helpful.
  • The upgrade reporting seems to be hit and miss at best, currently I'm being told that we have 7 upgrades needed and it's only reporting one (and I know it's at least 2) [this I'll raise as a case].

Jon.

FormerMember
FormerMember
  • With the new Orion installer introduced for NPM 12.1 & 12.2, you can see the upgrade path as soon as you run the installer on the first screen.

  • This is a huge issue with solarwinds products. We have five or six modules with multiple pollers and this software is turning into an administration nightmare. Even the "upgrade adviser" was wrong in the install order.

  • I have this SWQL which I think should be pretty close - though it fails to run.

    SELECT E.EngineId, E.ServerName, E.IP, E.ServerType, E.EngineVersion, E.WindowsVersion, E.ServicePack,

    (SELECT MG.Version FROM Orion.ModuleGlobal MG WHERE MG.EngineId = E.EngineId AND MG.NAme = 'AP Monitor') as APMonitor,

    (SELECT MG.Version FROM Orion.ModuleGlobal MG WHERE MG.EngineId = E.EngineId AND MG.NAme = 'Core') as Core,

    (SELECT MG.Version FROM Orion.ModuleGlobal MG WHERE MG.EngineId = E.EngineId AND MG.NAme = 'DPA') as DPA,

    (SELECT MG.Version FROM Orion.ModuleGlobal MG WHERE MG.EngineId = E.EngineId AND MG.NAme = 'DPI') as DPI,

    (SELECT MG.Version FROM Orion.ModuleGlobal MG WHERE MG.EngineId = E.EngineId AND MG.NAme = 'Information Service') as InformationService,

    (SELECT MG.Version FROM Orion.ModuleGlobal MG WHERE MG.EngineId = E.EngineId AND MG.NAme = 'IP Address Manager') as IPAddressManager,

    (SELECT MG.Version FROM Orion.ModuleGlobal MG WHERE MG.EngineId = E.EngineId AND MG.NAme = 'NCM') as NCM,

    (SELECT MG.Version FROM Orion.ModuleGlobal MG WHERE MG.EngineId = E.EngineId AND MG.NAme = 'NetFlow Traffic Analyzer') as NetFlowTrafficAnalyzer,

    (SELECT MG.Version FROM Orion.ModuleGlobal MG WHERE MG.EngineId = E.EngineId AND MG.NAme = 'NPM') as NPM,

    (SELECT MG.Version FROM Orion.ModuleGlobal MG WHERE MG.EngineId = E.EngineId AND MG.NAme = 'PM') as PM,

    (SELECT MG.Version FROM Orion.ModuleGlobal MG WHERE MG.EngineId = E.EngineId AND MG.NAme = 'SEUM') as SEUM,

    (SELECT MG.Version FROM Orion.ModuleGlobal MG WHERE MG.EngineId = E.EngineId AND MG.NAme = 'SRM') as SRM,

    (SELECT MG.Version FROM Orion.ModuleGlobal MG WHERE MG.EngineId = E.EngineId AND MG.NAme = 'UDT') as UDT,

    (SELECT MG.Version FROM Orion.ModuleGlobal MG WHERE MG.EngineId = E.EngineId AND MG.NAme = 'VIM') as VIM,

    (SELECT MG.Version FROM Orion.ModuleGlobal MG WHERE MG.EngineId = E.EngineId AND MG.NAme = 'VoIP Monitor') as VoIPMonitor,

    (SELECT MG.Version FROM Orion.ModuleGlobal MG WHERE MG.EngineId = E.EngineId AND MG.NAme = 'Wireless Monitor') as WirelessMonitor

    FROM Orion.Engines E

    I am using this same sub select technique on other tables successfully - the following does work:

    SELECT Nodes.NodeID,

    (SELECT OperatingSystem as A FROM Orion.AssetInventory.ServerInformation WHERE ServerInformation.NodeID = Nodes.NodeID) as OperatingSystem

    FROM Orion.Nodes

    WHERE NodeId < 100

    any ideas why?

  • FormerMember
    FormerMember in reply to familyofcrowes

    I'm seeing upgrades taking about 2 to 3 hours across our estate (not including the additional web server which not really use). Doing more than 2 products at a time is a real pain, the web based alerting was awful as I did 4 module upgrades in one window which I do not want to repeat, I hope the need to upgrade modules in tandem does not carry on...

    Currently I'm about to go into my 3rd week of upgrades and just hoping that they don't release another one more before I'm finished the change window next week...

  • I would LOVE/NEED to see upgrade time decreased.  We used to have 2 upgrades a year until the upgrades were taking upwards of 10 to 12 hours.  Now we do one product at a time (NPM, SAM, NTA, etc...) monthly.  And just one product can take a long time when you have many additional pollers and web servers.

  • FormerMember
    FormerMember in reply to Deltona

    So following some pointers from oliver.grist‌ some of this is in the DB, you can get information on the additional pollers with

    SELECT EngineID, ServerName, IP, ServerType, EngineVersion, WindowsVersion, ServicePack, DisplayName FROM Orion.Engines

    Also you can get information on modules with

    SELECT Name, Version, DisplayName FROM Orion.InstalledModule

    And the following table I just found is even more useful:

    SELECT EngineID, Name, Version FROM Orion.ModuleGlobal

    So with a little SWIS magic it should be possible to report if any poller had a different version from the main poller..... now if the only if we knew if the new version were stored in the DB a could do an resource to show if an poller was behind or what updates needed to be installed.

  • It would be nice if we could SWIS into additional pollers to get this information and present it in the Polling Engines page.