DA8SP4 to DA9SP1 (How to Bypass 8SP5 and 9.0?)

[SGF]

Our current infrastructure is running DA8 SP4.  We want to upgrade to DA 9 SP1 but unfortunately, the compatibility guide says we can upgrade to DA9 SP1 from either DA8SP5 or DA9 base version.

Being a pretty complex and elaborate DA setup we have, we do not want to go through the upgrade process twice. 4 DA servers with 50+ customer databases, most of them around 100GB size along with the process of change management including testing, certification and QA, each upgrade will take upto a month to complete. Hence, 2 upgrades literally means more than 2 months of process and efforts.

Is there a way we can avoid this and directly go to DA9SP1 from DA8SP4? I talked to Symantec support personnel and they mentioned that there are DB base code changes that are required for 9SP1 and they are avaialble only in 8SP5 or 9 Baseversion. Can we apply these code changes directly on the database and upgrade to DA9SP1 directly?

[Liam_Finn1 · Accepted solution]

I'm sorry to say there is no way around this.

You must go to SP5 first before you can upgrade to 9.0.1. You can however go from 8 SP4 to 8 SP5 then 9.0.1 on the same day. The changes between SP4 and SP5 are small so the upgrade process of these should be fast

Going to 8SP5 to 9.0.1 has some schema chnages and will take a little longer but i see no reason why you cant do both one directly after another

[Mojorsn]

We partially bypassed 8.0 SP5 by following the steps below, not sure if it is approved by Symantec, but it worked for us.

Our enviroment was at 8.0 SP4 with 6 servers (1 Journaling only, 1 archiving only, 2 Journaling/Archiving, 1 CA, 1 DA servers).

1. Stopped the EV services and the CA/DA services on all the EV Servers.
2. Upgraded to EV 9.0 SP1 on the 4 EV Journaling and Archiving servers.
3. Upgraded EV to 8.0 SP5 on the CA/DA servers
4. Started the CA/DA accelerator services on
5. Upgraded all customer DBs to 8.0SP5 through the admin page
6. Upgraded EV and CA/DA to 9.0SP1 on the CA/DA servers
7. Upgraded all customer DBs for CA/DA to 9.0SP1
8. Started all EV services on the 4 EV Journaling and Archiving servers.
9. Thoroughly tested all EV/CA/DA functionality

So it doesn't completely bypass the upgrade, but it does save you some steps.  Hope it helps.

[SGF]

Currently we will be upgrading only the DA servers to DA9SP1. EV servers will upgraded at a much later stage and hence I am not worried about the EV part.

If there is no way to skip the intermediate upgrade to 8SP5, Then we will go with two seperate upgrades for DA.

Is there any dates available for the 9SP2 release?

[Alok_Dave]

Hello There,

Sorry but direct upgrade of DA from 8.0 SP4 to 9.0 SP1 is not supported by Symantec. I can  understand the situation that you are facing but unfortunately it is the way it is at the moment. 

Any other workarounds around upgrade paths are not tested by the team @ Symantec and they are not officially supported.

What you can possibly do is to perform any of the following ....

DA 8.0 SP4 --> DA 9.0 --> DA 9.0 SP1

DA 8.0 SP4 --> DA 8.0 SP5 --> DA 9.0 SP1

Cheers,

Alok