Rolling back if 2012 upgrade fails?

[Upinit]

Hi All,

I'm new to this forum and I'm looking for some advice. I'm thinking about upgrading our BE 2010 R3 server to BE 2012. I would still have the 2010 server available if the upgrade fails but I'm wondering what to do about the remote agents installed on my machines. During the upgrade I would be upgrading the remote agents to 2012 but if I need to rollback to 2010 for any reason would I just need to push back out the 2010 agent and be good to go?

Thanks!

[SuperBrain]

It is highly recommended that you:

1. Go through the available documentation for Backup Exec 2012 Upgrade.
http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH180232

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/preparing-install-or-upgrade-be-2012

2. See the video tutorials available on Backup Exec's website:
http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH179977

http://techcenter.symantec.com/ecampus/enterprise

3. Create a virtual environment with Backup Exec 2010 R3 installed, and attempt an upgrade on the test server to see how it would look like post-upgrade.

4. Play around with the new simplified GUI to make urself familiar with it.

After this you should be all set to upgrade your production machines! 

About your question regarding the Remote Agents. Yes, they will need to be reinstalled with 2010 Agents if you have to roll back to 2010. (BE databse roll back is not possible, so if you ever have to rollback, it will be a fresh install of BE 2010). Which is why i recommend you to do as mentioned above.

[Ken_Putnam]

if I need to rollback to 2010 for any reason would I just need to push back out the 2010 agent and be good to go?

As suggested above, if at all possible, install to a test environment before upgrading your production system

That being said, you should shut down all BE services and make a backup of  the \Catalogs and \Data folders before starting the upgrade to 2012

To "roll back" to 2010R3, uninstall 2012, boot. Install 2010, upgrade to the same patch level as you old system, boot agaim, then copy the saved \Catalogs and \Data folders back and boot one more time

You may need to remove the 2012 agents and boot the remote servers before pushingg the 2010R3 agents   Always a best practice anyway, tho upgrading does seem to work in most cases

[pkh]

Before you upgrade to BE 2012, maybe you would like to take a look at my article

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/preparing-install-or-upgrade-be-2012