Feedback on VS2 to VS6 conversion

Hello @dupasc

Glad to know that it was a great success ,appreciate the details too .

Indeed few more question to the point

     >>I assume it has with quite moderate number of volumes and CGs ?OR the VS2 was pretty less on load ?

     >>On cable check which you highlighted are you talking about FE ,WANCOM and Admin ports ?

     >>Did you rack stack install VS6 in advance and just deal the software level migration or the hours you described included the physical stack and other operations ?

     >>Also wonder and i assume you are experiencing all the advantages of VS6 comparing with Vs2 by now ?

Ok and unfortunate that you could not get this thorugh this time .I kindly request you to keep update here once you done with the conversion .

Thanks alot

I posted about our upgrade here http://thefluffyadmin.net/?p=929

The upgrade was not completely smooth. The current version of the upgradescript that EMC uses is not very robust. Meaning that if it runs into 1 issue, it will fail and you cannot easily go back or redo anything.  EMC engineering then has to go into the JSON file and reset things, or due various steps like the i/o transfer step manually.

Cool ,So that assumed to be a successful conversion or did you face some sort of concerns over upgrade ?

Yes conversion was completely successful. We are operating the new VS6 cluster just like it was the old one. But with twice the performance.  it does not impact you operationally at all.

My main concern was loosing both directors at the same time. Considering the manual cabling work required, and the fickleness of the upgrade script, this is a risk. But as we have a metro cluster, I was able to move all production VMs to the other datacenter first. So all that was left was local, non-replicated VMs that where not production anyway.

The reason the script failed on the second day with the second cluster is not entirely clear. As the VS6 director was coming online for the i/o transfer, it timed out in the upgrade script with an error about not being able to establish quorum. This may have been as a result of either a wan-com port being incorrectly closed, or local-com (the Infiniband ports) being incorrectly down.  When the script fails halfway, it can leave the directors and settings in an inconsistent state.

We had engineering on a webex with us while the local EMC guys did the upgrade. This was crucial in saving time. I would much recommend you insist that engineering is on standby or with you on webex when you do the upgrade.