Upgrade from 6.0SP1 to 6.0SP3. Should I?

[Phil_McDougal]

Hello,

I was told that we need to upgrade our Vault server to the latest and greatest. I was pondering if the benefits of going to sp3 are worth the effort or if I should just wait for 7.0. Normally, I don't like to jump on the new releases but if there is some new features that blow my socks off, I might deal with the growing pains.

Currently, my environment is pretty solid so I'd rather not break it. But my managment read "Performance enhancement" in the SP3 docs and they creamed their jeans demanding we jump on it.

Your thoughts?

Phil.

[Michael_Bilsbor]

Hi,

Yes, I would certainly recommend going to V6 sp3.

What performance enhancement have they spotted? What performance issues are you encountering?

[Micah_Wyenn]

Yeah,
that's a curious point to make on the performance docs. I'm not sure I've ever seen a sp3 specific performance guide, just the 6.x version. Frankly, those numbers aren't as relevant as they should be, since today's servers aren't even using the same cpu/chipsets that were tested in the lab. Toss in virtualization, multi-cores, etc...and you can see that the perf. #'s aren't exactly apples to apples.
I'm not saying that the doc is bunk, but rather that your mileage will vary. Standard deviations to or from their norms in the guide are to be expected at the very least.

And yeah, with that said, still upgrade. Stability is key, and sp3 delivers a lot more then sp1 or 2 had.

micah

[Phil_McDougal]

Thanks for the replies.

I'm not encountering any performance issues other than running out of storage and backup times but I think we're all experiencing those ... aren't we?

But if SP3 is even more stable, how can I pass it up?

My next question is upgrading. I haven't upgraded a KVS environment in years so I'm wondering if it's still the same. Obviously I have to upgrade the vault server but do we still upgrade the front and back end Exchange systems too?

Thank you for your help!
Phil.

[Micah_Wyenn]

Phil,
Yup. :) To help your backup times, consider creating new partitions at least quarterly (even if they point to the same storage) so that you can shrink backup windows by reducing the backups of the closed partitions. Also, in sp3 you can now safely enable collections without fear of corruption.

micah

[Phil_McDougal]

Thanks Micah!

I was introduced to partitions a few months back and now I create them every month to keep our times ;) But I'm always under the gun to improve all our processes. I actually do Collections as well. But I've been having lots of issues with 0 byte files and I was always suspicious of the collections. Maybe that will help my 0 byte issue (which I personally think is an issue with foreign or odd characters in SPAM that enters the journal).

Thank you for the advice and hopefully it will go smoothly.

Speaking of smooth upgrades, I have 3 Exchange systems (all clustered) and single front-end OWA box, do ALL of them (the 6 physical back-end nodes and 1 front-end) need to get upgraded as well as the Vault server?

Thanks again,
Phil.

[MarkBarefoot]

Whenever you do an upgrade with EV you have to install the relevant binaries on all the servers involved. In your case you would need to install the SP3 OWA extensions on each Exchange server and run the config. Basic rule is SP3 on the server - SP3 on all the other servers.

[Phil_McDougal]

Thanks Mark.

I was really hoping that things had changed since the last time I upgraded these 8 systems. ;)

Does anyone know if upgrading requires a reboot on Windows2003 FE,BE and EV systems?

Thanks,
Phil.

[Phil_McDougal]

Hey all,

Another upgrade question. Can anyone correct my order of ops here? I have 1 EV server and 1 CA server and I'm unsure of the upgrade order (the install guide didn't clarify it for me..).

On the vault server ..

1. Stop all EV Services
2. Stop all IIS services
3. Upgrade Vault server by running setup.exe
4. Start Directory Service
5. Run the EV Configuration utility

On the CA server

1. Stop the CA service
2. Stop IIS services
3. Upgrade EV by running setup.exe (on the CA server)


On the backend (exchange) servers

1. Run the Configuration Utility for Back-end Systems

On the frontend (exchange OWA) servers

1. Run the Configuration Utility for Front-end Systems

Reboot all systems

Test archives in Outlook and OWA.



Now, do I have to run the Configuration Utility on the CA server even though it has the option to? And all EV services are stopped on this system except for the CA service. Do I need to start them up during the upgrade process at any time?

Thank you for your help! I truly appreciate it!

Phil.