7.1 to 7.4

[amr12]

Hey all,

We are going to upgrade to 7.1 to 7.4 so we can get support for the latest windows 10 builds.  We are on a pretty vanilla build and everything is done by the book.

Has anyone had any issues with 7.4 on Windows 7?

The plan is simple:

Update composer

Update internal connection server

Update external connection server

Update security server

Update parent VM with new agent

Set pools to recompose at log off

Anyone see any problems with this plan?

In my dev environment there haven't been any issues with the 7.1 agents running on the 7.4 back end, the longest this would be like this in production is 4 days.

Once this is done i can bash my head against the wall with Windows 10

[BenFB · Accepted solution]

We just did the upgrade last week and no issue to report (We had a prior failed upgrade to 7.3.2 due to a bug that was fixed in 7.4.0 that required us to revert to our snapshots). We've upgraded some of our parents to 7.4.0 and are still working on upgrading the rest (We have around 100 parents). No issues with the 7.1.0 agent.

This is the process that works for us.

1. Verify there are no pending restart/patches on the Connection Servers/Composer Server. Restart at least once to verify.
2. Verify there are no pending or scheduled composer operations.
3. Disable provisioning
4. Verify AD LDS replication is healthy
5. Backup the ADAM database
6. Shutdown all connection servers and composer server, take a snapshot.
7. Backup the composer SQL database
8. Power on composer server
9. Power on the connection servers one at a time
10. Verify AD LDS replication is healthy
11. Upgrade composer, restart.
12. Upgrade first connection server, restart.
13. Upgrade remaining connection servers one at a time, restart
14. Point Horizon/Zero/Thin client to each of connection servers and verify connections are working.
15. Verify AD LDS replication is healthy
16. Enable provisioning, test provisioning operations.

[amr12]

thanks so much for your more thorough reply

[BenFB]

amr12 If you don't mind please mark it as the correct answer. Thanks and good luck with your upgrade!

[amr12]

Done.

Question - why did you shutdown the connection and composer servers when you snapped them?

[mbud01]

Actually i did the same for all upgrades.

If something goes wrong and troubleshooting takes too long it is easier just to roll back to snapshot in powered off (clean shutdown) state and bring the systems back online (with SQL DB restore first)

upgraded 7.0.2->7.2->7.3->7.4  "so far no issues "

Probably cannot do that if availability is a concern but if there is window where the systems are not in use then that is when to do it.

[amr12]

Ahh makes sense!  So before the power up restore SQL and then bring everything back up eh?

[BenFB]

It ensure that there is no pending replication of the ADAM database between the connection servers. I took a snapshot with the connection servers powered on once and has to rollback. It was a mess with replication issues and we spent hours on the phone with VMware uninstalling all of the connection servers and adding one back at a time (We had to do this multiple times).

You should do the same thing when upgrading PSC/VCSA if you have more than one.