Re: 8.3 Alpha Upgrade Tips

On Sun, 27 Apr 2008, bradhamilton wrote:
[color=blue]
> Mike wrote:[color=green]
>> Upgrading from Alpha 7.3 to 8.3... any special hints/tips?
>>[/color]
> Without knowing any more detail about your environment, I would take the
> "virgin" DS10L and do a fresh V8.3 install on it.[/color]

Hi Brad, but which type of install - standalone/non-clustered/clustered?[color=blue]
>
> Your post implies that there is another Alpha system with some version of
> V7.3-N.[/color]

The existing DS10L, the "live" referred to, is running 7.3 period and
7.3 to 8.3 is not a supported migration pair.
[color=blue]
> If N=2, I *think* you can cluster the two systems without difficulty,
> and then upgrade to V8.3 at your leisure[/color]

The virgin DS10L will be 7.3..7.3-2 so could conceivably be clustered
to the existing live one running 7.3 but would defeat the object of
making use of an intermediate non-live system to go from 7.3 to 8.3.

Rephrasing the original question, if you had a choice, would you
upgrade 7.3 to 8.3 (possibly requiring an intermediate upgrade) or
re-build live onto 8.3?
[color=blue]
> (or alternatively, create another system root on the DS10L system disk,
> and boot the other machine into that root, ..[/color]

The disks aren't big, 9GB COMPAQ BB009222B5s, albeit only 1/3 full, but
would prefer a less risky strategy. Julie Altswitch detailed a cloned
If using a second disk made it so much easier, I'd certainly consider it,
though it's not like the capacity's actually needed.
[color=blue]
> My suppositions assume that you might have "other" disks on the systems,
> and have segregated your applications and their associated data from
> the system disks. If the system disks are the only disks, your task
> becomes more complicated, but still possible. Different approaches
> might be needed, depending on your scheme.[/color]

Exactly, which is why I'm asking here to seek the benefit of experience.

Each DS10L is single-disked with the OS and "applications" co-resident.
Its probably more trouble than its worth to migrate the freeware, and
the approach taken recently on another OS upgrade was simply to install
new packages of the freeware onto the new box running the later OS.
There's only one licenced app to truly migrate 7.3 to 8.3, but even that
will be a reinstall. Data is elsewhere...

I put-off the other-OS upgrade untill I had a spare, intermediate, box
and used the fresh install migrate stuff over approach which never
involves actually doing an OS upgrade. I found I abused the leisurely
approach it makes possible. The last 10% of stuff on old "live" never
got migrated so the old "live" still hasn't been switched off, wiped,
been given a fresh install of the latest OS and made a spare/test - an
approach advocated here in c.o.v. recently. With the other OS, the
"upgrade" was a migration to bigger hardware running a fresh install of
the later OS. Here, both boxes are identical which is why I raised the
additional question/complication of clustering. Its not a "must-have".
Certainly processing power is not an issue. Resilience/redundancy is.