Re: iTools upgrade strategy

At 2:27 PM -0700 4/26/04, cw@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Greetings all,

I have been prepping for a software upgrade, and before proceeding, I need help to come up with a strategy that will cause *no server down-time*. In the past, I would just build a drive at the office with the new software, migrated sites, test it, then swap the drives. I don't have a spare Xserve to test it off-line, I have mission-critical sites, and late-night access is not a good option in this case.

Current Web server set-up: [Co-located] Xserve Dual 1GB G4, 1GB RAM, OSXS 10.2.4, iTools 6.5.x, WebDNA 4.5.1, sendmail...

[In case it's of use in the equation, the email is on a second Xserve on the same network - with extra IP's and drives available for testing.]

-I have installed a new Xserve drive module, and installed Panther [*client*, updated it to 10.3.3],

...hmmm...surprised to know that Panther client actually works on Xserve.

At any rate, you should be aware that it is important to upgrade iTools 6.5 to iTools 7.x *before* moving to Panther, since iTools 6.x doesn't run on Panther. Further, iTools 7 is designed to upgrade from iTools 6.5 automatically.

So step one would be to upgrade the existing 10.2 iTools 6.5 system to iTools 7.3.

and Timbuktu on the new drive. I have paid upgrades to iTools 7.3, ready to install. For now, I am going to stick with WebDNA 4.5.1. Also, I plan to use Post.Office as a substitute for sendmail, which I can't shut down either.

If you are supporting more than 10 mail accounts, you need to purchase Post.Office, but it sounds like you are only using sendmail on this box to support scripts, right?

Step two would be to install Post.Office and make sure your current set up is working perfectly with iTools 7 and Post.Office on 10.2.

If you have support, you might want to involve Tenon and make an appointment at the quietest production time that coincides with Tenon's hours. (For example, Friday afternoon.)

WARNING: On April 30th, Tenon will have an electrical outage due to a planned building upgrade, so don't pick this Friday. :-)

I'm stumped... Any suggestions are greatly appreciated, as the docs don't appear to cover my situation.

I'm sure lots of people who have actually done similar transitions will have pointers to help you.

The two transition papers we do have on our site, both cover moving your servers to another machine, but they may have some useful bits of information. http://www.tenon.com/support/itools7/transition_doc.shtml#3.3 http://www.tenon.com/support/post_office/

-Anita


Regards,
-Chris
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