Eval over production

justinh,

If you're out of maintenance, you won't have access to the latest production version of NTA so it's unclear what you're trying to accomplish by installing the eval of the latest version.  Are you trying to verify an NTA fix before renewing maintenance?

Not sure if we'll be able to help, but can you clarify exactly what you're trying to accomplish?

Thanks,

That's exactly what I'm trying to do.  I've already paid for a product that never worked for us, so I'm never going to be able to convince anyone to pay for maintenance unless I can prove it's going to work.

Hi,

please which version of NTA do you have? Have you contact our support department? OutOfMemory exception is pretty rare, and we solved all (as I know) issues which was reported by customers and related to OutOfMemory.... So if your case fits to some of in our KB .....

If you want to try eval, you need to install it on separate box and than redirect netflow traffic to it. ( and you need also separate DB, because eval will upgrade your previous NTA DB, and you could not use it with older version at all)

thanks

ET

That's exactly what I'm trying to do.  I've already paid for a product that never worked for us, so I'm never going to be able to convince anyone to pay for maintenance unless I can prove it's going to work.

Ok, thanks for the clarification and thanks for giving us an opportunity to continue working with you.   What was the version you weren't able to make work?

If it was 2.x or earlier, then I'd like to have a call with you to discuss your options.

Thanks,

Hello ET,

I'm using NTA 3.1 according to my NTA settings page.

I haven't contacted your support department simply because I assumed that the first thing they'd want me to do was upgrade to the latest version, which I couldn't do without installing the eval version.  The OutOfMemory error is what's been plaguing me since I first installed this software.  I'm monitoring maybe 450Mbps of traffic on 4 interfaces.

I also didn't contact support because this is a long and on-going issue I've had, and I was hoping not to have to go over it all again.

Installing an eval over production isn't a supported use-case for a variety of reasons. 

Is it possible to install the eval on a separate machine and redirect your NetFlow exports to that server? 

If not, we can discuss other options.

Not particularly.  Part of the delay was reconfiguring our entire SQL back end based on recommendations from your staff.  Creating a new hardware setup (even virtually) would defeat the purpose of the work we've done over the last couple of months.

Understood. 

There may be a way to install the eval over the production version.  Try the following:

1. Back up your Orion database.   If you don't do this, there's no going back

2. Park your current NTA license using License Manager (server must be able to reach the Internet or this won't work)

3. Uninstall NTA 3.1

4. Install latest NTA evaluation version

Please note that I haven't tested these steps myself, so it's critical to back up your database.

I don't know what to say.  You've put me in a position where, given my constraints, I can't buy your product even if I wanted to, or even try the current version.

Suffice it to say, after having to justify a 7 1/2 hour downtime a week ago because of my upgrade to 9.5.1, I'm not going to get anyone to sign off on another potential catastrophe.

If you want a suggestion, put "make it easier for lapsed customers to try current versions of our software without gutting their installs" somewhere on your list.

I can appreciate your predicament, but unfortunately, the workarounds I've provided are likely the best we can do.   Just in case, I'll reach out to dev just to double check that I haven't missed anything.  

It's important to realize that we generally don't have customers in this situation (no maintenance, can't install on separate machine) so there's been no driver to optimize for this use-case. 

Thanks,