Just to be safe make a backup of the DB and your Maps and Reports folders-
All the nodes and alerts,etc...will remain in the DB. As long as you can restore the DB all your nodes will remain there. Some ASP/HTML customizations have been broken in the upgrade process due to the new .net architecture.
Per the Release Notes:
You must upgrade all Orion modules, additional web servers, additional pollers, and hot standby engines to the latest versions. Until the components are upgraded, the Orion website, modules, and components may not function properly. Download the latest versions from the SolarWinds Customer Portal. The latest version will be 8.5 for all modules and components except for NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, which will be v2.5.
Warning: Though the upgrade of version 7 and its point releases to Orion NPM version 8.5 should be blocked on a server running Microsoft Windows 2000, it is not. Do not upgrade your Orion implementation until you upgrade your server to Windows 2003. Windows 2000 is not a supported operating system and the database upgrades cannot be rolled back.
- When upgrading from version 8.0.2 or earlier, database changes required to improve performance cause the database update to take longer than in previous upgrades. For example, a database of 10GB can take over an hour to upgrade.
- Orion NPM does not support the use of case-sensitive database servers.
- Whenever you install a new module or upgrade Orion NPM, ensure you first back up your database.
Case-Sensitive Database Servers
There are a number of known issues installing the Orion database on case-sensitive database servers, therefore it is not recommended.
To check the collation and case-sensitivity of your database and of your server you can run the following query using the Database Manager shipped with Orion: select databasepropertyex( db_name(), 'Collation') as DatabaseCollation, serverproperty('Collation') as ServerCollation. To run a query, right-click on any table in the database and click Query Table, type the query in the Query window, and then click Refresh to run the query.
If you have Enterprise Manager or SQL Server Management Studio Express, you can right-click the server and then click Properties. The collation type can be found on the General tab. Then, expand the server, expand Databases, right-click the NetPerfMon database, and then click Properties. Again, the collation can be found on the General tab.
In the following example, the letters CI show that the database is case-insenstive: SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS. If the database was case-sensitive, the letters CS would be present, instead.
Note: If you are experiencing issues and your database server is case-sensitive, we recommend installing the Orion database on a case-insensitive database server.
Maps and Reports After Upgrading
If you uninstalled your previous version of Orion manually, the setup program does not find and does not migrate your maps and reports to the new directory structure. You will not see maps or reports in the Web Console until you copy your maps folder and reports folder from the previous directory structure to the new directory structure. The old default location was: \Program Files\SolarWinds\Network Performance Monitor v7. The new default installation location is: \Program Files\SolarWinds\Orion.
Custom Menu Items After Upgrading
Orion 8.5 introduces a new website directory structure to the Orion Web Console. Because of this, some of your custom menu items in the Orion Web Console may need to be updated. Previous versions of Orion used the/NetPerfMon directory for all files which allowed you to use relative links such as View.asp?ViewID=24. These URLs will need to be updated to an absolute URL starting with /Orion. For example, /Orion/SummaryView.aspx?ViewID=24.
