Hello John,

Assuming you follow the route of going to 8SP5, then to 9, then to 10:

Depending on the planning, if you upgrade in 1 go (ie a weekend or something) you could roll out the new client beforehand. Although Symantec states that the client can be 1 version off (ie EV8 client works with EV7/8/9 server), I have not seen issues running an old(er) client to a newer EV server version. Safest is however to have the clients be on the same level (or 1 down) as the server version. I would roll out the EV10 client before upgrading.

The FSA agent will need to be upgraded after the EV-server is upgraded. There is with each EV version an update.htm file, which describes what changes, or has to be done to perform a succesfull upgrade.

On the Exchange server, if you use OWA, you will have to upgrade the OWA extentions also.

I personally am in favor of upgrading 1 step at the time (ie first to 8SP5, watch that for a week, goto 9, watch that for a week, then go to 10, but I also know of companies doing such upgradepath in a weekend. This does depend on your environment. If you have a few EV servers (1 to 5) upgrading in 1 go is an option, if you have more, it might be better to upgrade weekly.

The main advise I can give is BACKUP! Mainly your SQL databases, as these are the ones getting upgraded. The indexes and data is not touched, until after the upgrade to 10, after which you can convert the indexes to 64-bit ones. Having said that, you do know that EV10 requires W2008R2? If you do not have this (yet), that is an extra step before upgrading to EV10. I have done an upgrade using the Server Migration Wizard (going from 9 to 10), which helps in moving EV to a new server.

Good luck!