Mirroring WEM environment(8.1) on a new server to perform upgrade to WEM 8.5

Hi,

We are in process of migrating from 8.1 WEM to WEM 8.5, we want to achieve this my first mirroring our existing environment on the new server and perform the vgnupgrade to upgrade to 8.5.

The same question can also be framed like how do we achieve a restore of our current environment on a different server, if the current say crashes

How do we perform the first step? Can you please help explaining the above with proper KB articles or PDFs to refer, this would really help us.

Regards,

Neha

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Evan_Bench

1. WEM Transfer tool is used to "clone" a WEM instance before upgrade (minimizes risk).

https://knowledge.opentext.com/knowledge/cs.dll/Open/19604893

2. Otherwise you can use OpenText Motion which can not only clone but can do insitu migration more effectively than using WTT.

https://knowledge.opentext.com/knowledge/cs.dll/Open/39600711

Yet another option is using the PS migration toolkit which requires custom build but is very effective (need to contact PS to get this)

Doug_McLaren

In addition to what Evan said, one could attempt to come closer to what you're proposing.

I'm not sure that a KB exists on the procedure, but the general gist of it would be --

1) shut down entire installation, all processes, including database. (This is important for taking a proper backup.)

2) duplicate this all on a new set of boxes on a disconnected network that cannot reach the old installation.

3) once that's done, you can bring the old boxes back up. Note that any changes or new content added after this will not show up in the new system, so things will have to be duplicated.

4) go through the new installation and update all hosts to point to the new boxes and to make sure nothing refers back to the old boxes. Once done, start the new installation and confirm that it works.

5) upgrade the new boxes

6) shut down the old boxes

7) move the new boxes where the old boxes were, or change DNS to point to the new box's locations rather than the old.

8) if you changed their IPs or hostnames, make sure that you update the V8 configuration to use the new names/addresses.

Now, this is all relatively straightforward -- except for #4 and #8. For those, I'm not sure we've worked out everywhere that would need to be changed -- the way to do this would probably be to attempt this.

It's important new boxes be on their own network during the upgrade, unable to reach the original installation, until the procedure is done, to make sure nothing messes with the production network until we're ready for it to do so. Really, I'd say this is quite important -- make sure there's *no* way for this new setup to reach the old one.

If everything used hostnames rather than IP addresses, then we may not have to even update the V8 configuration at all -- just change the DNS or hosts files. But it's always possible that something will have put in an IP address rather than a hostname.

Actually, we could bring up the new machines in their own network but with the same IPs and hostnames. The new network will need its own DNS server, and some way to reach LDAP and other similar servers used, but it absolutely does need to be on its own unconnected network, as it'll have the same network addresses. Then upgrade there and test. And once happy with it, just shut down the original servers and put these servers in place.

But we don't really have any documentation on trying to do this, and it's not really tested -- it ought to work, but there's room for gotchas that I haven't considered, especially on a production system with lots of customizations and tweaks. The supported and tested ways would be what Evan suggested.

Neha_Chaturvedi

Thanks alot for your help! really appreciate it