Sorry about the wall of text! I'm needing to upgrade my Orion environment and I ran into some questions on how to do it. Basically:
Current Environment:
OS: x64, Windows Server 2008 R2 (Enterprise, SP1)
DB: x64, "SQL Server 2012, SP3" (11.0.6020.0, SP3)
NPM 11.0.1
SAM 6.1.1
IPAM 4.3
NCM 7.2.2
UDT 3.1.0
Future Environment: (basically *update to all the newest versions*, and stay on the same DB and OS)
NPM 11.5.3
SAM 6.2.3
IPAM 4.3.1
NCM 7.4.1
UDT 3.2.3
Details:
When I ran the Upgrade Advisor, I got an error about "database compatibility" (even though I can't put in the exact SP version of my DB, I chose SP2) and it would not return results, similar to this post: Upgrade Advisor - Erroneous Incompatibility Report
I took the database info out and ran it again, it says this is the upgrade path:
1. Upgrade Network Performance Monitor from version 11.0.1 to version 11.5.3
2. Upgrade Network Configuration Manager from version 7.2.2 to version 7.4.1
3. Upgrade Server & Application Monitor from version 6.1.1 to version 6.2.3
4. Upgrade User Device Tracker from version 3.1 to version 3.2.3
5. Upgrade IP Address Manager from version 4.3.0 to version 4.3.1
Seems simple enough... but then I took a look at the older upgrade/compatibility charts just to see at: SolarWinds Knowledge Base :: Compatibility of SolarWinds Orion Products for Installation and Upgrade
From these charts, the latest and greatest versions are sometimes *not* listed (like SAM has compatibility considerations between NPM 11.5.x, and 11.5.2, but does not have 11.5.3 listed).
I looked up the supported database versions in all of the product docs/release notes and it appears my OS and database are compatible with all versions (some of them didn't explicitly list SQL Server 2012 *with SP3*, but SP1 and SP2 were usually listed...)
Questions:
1. Since the upgrade Advisor indicated a DB incompatibility but didn't say what product it was related to, does anyone know what that would be? Is SQL Server 2012, SP3 supported across all of the newest products or does one have a "gotcha"?
2. Is the Upgrade Advisor the better/preferred tool to use nowadays or are the charts still the preferred choice? If I look at the charts regarding upgrading NPM directly from 11.0.1 to 11.5.3 and then compatibility with SAM, I would hesitate to take the Upgrade Advisor's advice as SAM 6.1.1 doesn't appear to be compatible with NPM 11.5.3 (because it's not listed, but more because there's some compatibility issues? with NPM 11.5.2). The "11.5.x" compatibility column in SAM looks like it may need to say "11.5.1"...
Thanks in advance!
