way behind on upgrading

Question

I admit I am way behind on upgrading.

Started reading the v9.2 upgrade doc a few times but easy to get pulled away on other priorities. I am trying to buckle down this time.

I am currently at 8.2.4 and ran into an issue where I found out support isn't even best effort anymore. Also noticed v18.1 is now out.

I have old servers that don't support the new client versions and it seems like Dell/EMC is being more stringent about support of much older clients so not sure how much I will be able to even back up once I get around to upgrading.
At least my last clients with v7.x that couldn't be upgraded to some version of v8 are powered off with the understanding that they aren't going to be powered back on, unless someone higher up dictates otherwise. That still leaves some clients that weren't able to be upgraded to v8.2.4. One is stuck at 8.0.4.

Are the catalogs transferable to a new system and app version?
I am wondering if it wouldn't be easier to just get a new (or refurb) server. Install the latest version on it, and either recreate the setup or hopefully there is some tool that would allow moving and upgrading the configuration files from the old machine so that I would at least have some kind of functional backup environment while moving to the new version.

Have others upgraded by switching to a new server?

bingo.1 · Accepted Answer

Supporting old clients is not the issue. As you know some cannot even be upgraded (at least a higher version is not supported).

Upgrading from NW 8.2.4 to 9.2 should not cause any major issues (most is done automatically) but the resources and the GUI are very different.

May I suggest that you …

- install a NW 8.2 server (eval mode), run some backups and upgrade him later

- familiarize with the conversion and the new GUI

Next …

- virtualize your NW Server

- run a disaster recovery (without file Indexes)

- upgrade this machine

- train yourself again

Finally, you are ready to upgrade the real NW Server.

The major issue is licensing. Dell recommends to use the new licensing server but with NW 9.2 you should be able to use your old licenses. You just need new auth codes but you have plenty of time as the new version runs for 90 days without authorization.

ckieffer · Accepted Answer

To close this out.

The problem was related to the OpenJDK Java I was trying to use given the recent changes to Oracle's Java policy.
I stuck with the old Java I had and upgrade of production went quite well since I have a fairly basic system.

Researching more I finally found an OpenJDK JRE that does work. I later found that Dell/EMC provides their own variant they call NRE which took me a lot longer to find, but once I did it seemed to be easily seen in a number of documents.

On to trying to get the the latest v19.1.

Thank you to all who responded.

ckieffer · Answer

Thanks.  I have a VEEAM server I think I should be able to install the Networker on to at least test the upgrade steps before deleting it and upgrading my production one.

ckieffer · Answer

My first attempt fizzled. Since my test is on a client that gets backed up I had to roll back and reinstall the 8.2 client, but I have a question as I read through the troubleshooting section.

When having problems with authenticating with the NMC, it mentions looking for port conflicts with other applications that use Apache Tomcat.

Turns out the Dell OpenManage software uses Tomcat. The best I can tell it doesn't use the ports Networker uses but I am curious if someone has confirmed this.

I don't like the solution to uninstall the conflicting tomcat application because the Dell OpenManage does come in handy when there are hardware issues.

So, has anyone run across this? Otherwise I try again next week.

NetWorker

way behind on upgrading

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