Client Management Suite

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  • 1.  Upgrading from 7.5 SP1 HF5 - any tips?

    Trusted Advisor
    Posted Jan 21, 2016 02:01 PM

    I'm looking to upgrade our CMS environment to latest (we're 7.5 SP1 HF5 right now, no site servers just one NS server and separate SQL box).  I dread these upgrades and only do them once a year because I've never had one go smoothly.

    Here's a thread I posted of issues I went through when upgrading to SP1 HF5 and all my deploy tasks broke. If anyone has any tips of any items that should be manually backed up prior to upgrade (or a doc somewhere), I'd love the info.  I also put a ticket in with more specific questions below.  We are happy with Bomgar, so loss of pcanywhere is fine.

    1) We rely heavily on deployment of images and patching.  Are there any big known bugs with these products that I should not upgrade?  We are stable right now.  I don't use deployanywhere, if that matters.

    2) is there a document spelling out what I should manually backup ahead of the upgrade?  On various upgrades I've lost image files, I've lost the files inside of 'copy file' jobs, etc.

    3) Will the SIM install products in the correct order for me?  It looks like right now it's prompting me to install 7.6.  I assume after I do that I should do any/all available hotfixes?  Do I need to wait a day between installing 7.6 and installing hotfixes (someone in support had suggested that on prior upgrades).

    4)  What is best practice for the client agent upgrade policies? is that written somewhere that those should be disabled on upgrade, then should you enable on one test a few clients to make sure all is working before enabling for all clients?  I've previously just let the upgrade policies stay on, but I didn't know if this is risky if something blows up.

    I found this - https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.DOC8146.html but it's so much to pour through.  

    My biggest worries really are what should I backup that the upgrade might hose/trash and if anything is broken in the current release that should cause me concern.  thanks for any thoughts.

     



  • 2.  RE: Upgrading from 7.5 SP1 HF5 - any tips?

    Trusted Advisor
    Posted Jan 21, 2016 02:15 PM

    Found the known issues section in the HF7 documentation.  This seems like a dealbreaker, am I reading this right that in PXE machines won't reboot to production properly?  Or is this only if you're using local automation folders?  Will ask support, too

    "The Power control Reboot to production environment command times out while attempting to reboot a client computer in WinPE automation environment."

     

     



  • 3.  RE: Upgrading from 7.5 SP1 HF5 - any tips?
    Best Answer

    Posted Jan 21, 2016 03:20 PM

    I had no issues with PXE machines booting into prod after going to 7.6 HF6. The upgrade was pretty smooth.

    1 NS w/NBS x 3 Site Servers (1 with NBS) and 1 off-machine SQL.

    The only issues I had were some permissions got whacked on my patch policies, but it may have been an underlying issue revealed by the upgrade itself.

    I let SIM do everything (under close supervision, of course). I also reboot all of my Altiris infrastructure servers and then let them settle for a bit before executing the upgrades. It put HF6 on automatically as that was the latest avail at the time.

    I've never lost an image, but I always always back them up. I also back up my deployment tasks, but have yet to lose any to an upgrade.



  • 4.  RE: Upgrading from 7.5 SP1 HF5 - any tips?

    Posted Jan 21, 2016 03:31 PM

    Oh, forgot to add that Workflow caused an issue, too...we uninstalled it and all was good as we don't use it. Why was it installed to begin with...ah, we had plans... :)



  • 5.  RE: Upgrading from 7.5 SP1 HF5 - any tips?

    Trusted Advisor
    Posted Jan 21, 2016 03:32 PM

    I mistyped above.  The known issue is in the HF7 documentation... maybe you lucked out staying on HF6 :)

    Thanks for replying though.  



  • 6.  RE: Upgrading from 7.5 SP1 HF5 - any tips?

    Posted Jan 22, 2016 03:00 AM

    What you maybe want to consider is to build a test environment which is pretty much the same as your production environment. This test environment maybe can be just a virtual machine with onbox sql and maybe a couple of clients connected to it. But this would help you a lot to go through an upgrade and see if it breaks anything in your specific environment. You have the possibilty to see problems before you upgrade your production environment and are able to report and solve these problems with support so that when it comes to the upgrade in your production environment you have a solution by hand.

    Regarding the agent upgrade policies. It is best practise to disable them prior to upgrade. And when the upgrade is finished you start with applying the upgrade policies to the site servers before starting with the upgrades on the clients.



  • 7.  RE: Upgrading from 7.5 SP1 HF5 - any tips?

    Trusted Advisor
    Posted Jan 22, 2016 07:09 AM

    I sure wish when we set up our 7.x environment ~7 years ago that someone from Symantec or the docs had suggested this.  Now I fear going through the process wouldn't closely replicate production anyway.  I don't remember anything about how we set it up and our database that has gone through so many interations from 7.1, to 7.5 to SP1, etc.

    We don't have any site servers, but thanks for the tips.



  • 8.  RE: Upgrading from 7.5 SP1 HF5 - any tips?

    Trusted Advisor
    Posted Jan 22, 2016 03:37 PM

    For anyone interested, support called back and assured me the 'reboot to production' tasks would be fine and only Power control tasks are effected.  The wording in the known issues doc is misleading. fingers crossed...



  • 9.  RE: Upgrading from 7.5 SP1 HF5 - any tips?

    Trusted Advisor
    Posted Jan 27, 2016 03:34 PM

    Upgrade went smoothly, thanks to all that replied.  The only thing I lost was the 'managed deployment' menu was blank and had to be re-created manually which isn't a huge deal.