Greyhawk just moved and upgraded a Domino server in a few hours

November 28 2005

John Roling writes up his experience moving a Domino 6.5.4 on Windows 2000 to a Domino 7 server on Windows 2003, in a total time of three hours.  

So in the course of 3 hours, I moved an entire Notes server from one hardware platform and one OS to another piece of hardware and a newer OS. I then upgraded the Notes server to version 7. The only reason it took 3 hours was because the 60 GB transfer of the data directory took two hours  :)

Try that with Exchange. I dare you.
This is one of the beauties of portable code.  An NSF is an NSF is an NSF.  Very straightforward, and removes a lot of the administrative burden of upgrading hardware.  I'm not an expert, but from what I've read, I think John's dare is on solid ground.  Time trials, anyone? :)

Ed Brill Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Lotus  Add/View Comments [20]

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  1. 1  Paul Mooney http://www.pmooney.net | 11/28/2005 9:43:26 AM

    I am currently trying to put together a task list, outlining the required tasks for completing a Domino server move and then an exchange 2000 server move..... Will publish when I have it finished.

  1. 2  Danny Lawrence  | 11/28/2005 9:56:09 AM

    The thing I always tell people WRTO upgrading Domino vs Exchange is "I upgrade the hardware and software independantly". My principal Domino server has run on 3 or 4 different pieces of hardware, and has run at least 8 different versions (major and minor) of Domino. I have never upgraded the hardware and Domino version at the same time. In fact I try to avoid doing this because when upgrading you try to make as few changes as possible so you can back out if you have to.

  1. 3  Andrew  | 11/28/2005 2:29:29 PM

    The remarkable thing about this is not that he was able to move the server so quickly, but that my only thought on reading it was, so where's the story?

    Like every other Domino admin out there, server migrations and upgrades are so brain-dead simple that they aren't worth worrying about. As your article mentioned, the hardest/longest part is moving all the data across the network. I'm currently in the middle of planning an upgrade from 5 to 7 on about 40 servers. The only thing that has me worried is the OS upgrades I'll need to perform. If I could just upgrade Domino on its own, I'd be finished in a couple of weekends.

  1. 4  Greyhawk68 http://greyhawk68.dominohosting.biz | 11/28/2005 2:54:28 PM

    Yup, there is no story per se Andrew. It's just one of those things that doesn't get talked about much, and I definitely wanted to point it out so people remember. I had the unfortunate task of being an Exchange admin for awhile, and migrations were hugely involved and rarely successful.

    Upgrades like the ones I just preformed just re-emphasize how good Domino is, and how much I like working with it.

    -Grey

  1. 5  Bruce Currier  | 11/28/2005 3:40:46 PM

    I've got a 5-partition, over-the-wan 2 node cluster environment that we've upgraded from v5 to various v6 and now to v7. The v7 upgrade went so smooth at my site, I did the remote site over the WAN with a VNC connection on the same day.

  1. 6  Anthony Pope  | 11/28/2005 3:51:37 PM

    We've a remote office (albeit as small one) running 6.0.1 CF1 on XP (.... yeh yeh not officially supported I know .. but hey it works!).

    Elapsed time: 161 days 07:49:17

    Try that on Exchange. I dare you. ;-)

  1. 7  Wild Bill http://www.billbuchan.com | 11/28/2005 5:53:54 PM

    I can testify that this is not a "simple" server migration, nor an uncommon solution. Its what we've all done time and time again.

    I migrated 40+ servers over this summer using this method. Okay - we were paranoid and had 18 items on our checklists - but by and large, the users didnt notice they'd been swapped off a Pentium 133 NT box onto a new shiny IBM blade farm running win2k. Well, aside from the speed improvement, obviously.

    Our main server - hosted by the Prominic guys - moved from AIX to solaris 8 on intel, then onto windows. its upgraded version from v5.02 (back in the year 2000 I think), through all those increments, and is now on ND7. We'll probably move it back to Linux soon as it'd be far far more stable.

    And all without extended user service interruption.

    Oh. Elapsed time - best I've seen this year was 270 days. And they brought it down for a power supply upgrade in the computer room. (OS/2 before you ask)

    (Still doesnt beat my old Novell 3.11 server - 450+ days... But getting close)

    ---* Bill

  1. 8  Wild Bill http://www.billbuchan.com | 11/28/2005 6:02:54 PM

    Oh. A thought occurred to me. Reading all those "I hate outlook" google hits, a lot of the complaints seem to be about migrating data to and from outlook.

    I've had 7-8 laptops since I started working as a Consultant in Notes (10 years ago!) and kept the same notes data directory, mail file (okay - I had to archive when it hit 3gb..) since then. And have it on several backup machines too. All at the same time, getting the same replicated mail file and applications as the other instances.

    Is this another "ease of use" thing about Notes that we dont even consider, as its so easy to do ?

    ---* Bill

  1. 9  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 11/28/2005 6:30:02 PM

    @6 161 days on an unsupported OS. Unreal. :)

  1. 10  Alan Dalziel  | 11/28/2005 8:18:47 PM

    The best elapsed times you'll ever see are on AS/400. I knew of one box that had been running continuously for over 3 years . . . .

  1. 11  Raj Patel  | 11/28/2005 8:46:33 PM

    Notes admin is by far and away the best there is for a Groupware client. Sure you can move text mail files around on a simple pop/smtp server faster but then you dpn't get the added groupware bells and whistles.

    IMHO ease of management should be a much bigger selling point for Notes than it is at the moment.

    In terms of migration - what if you set the replacement server up as a member of a Domino cluster - when the mailfiles were replicating successfully and up to date can you just switch the old server off overnight and have clients startup on the new server ?

  1. 12  Mike Robinson http://www.invcs.com | 11/28/2005 9:27:28 PM

    Hey, Exchange upgrades are intentionally difficult. Think about it...It's complexity fuels tech writers to collobrate (translate to annoy..) the devs in order to write all those cool "migration" Exchange white papers. Plus Exchange consultants can spend 6 months planning an Exchange 5.5 upgrade to 2003- oh heck, we'll stretch it out and just wait for Exchange 12, that way we can blow it all away and start over- it'll be easier.

    :)

  1. 13  Christophe Windelen www.windelen.be | 11/29/2005 2:30:43 AM

    And try to move Exchange from Windows to another OS ;-)

    ok that whas just for fun ... but moving domino from windows to linux for example is just as easy as moving to another Windows box.

    --> { Link }

  1. 14  Richard Smith www.basic.co.uk | 11/29/2005 6:04:51 AM

    @6 Im gonna send Ed a screen shot... Several years ago, I decided, that as our users were so nice, i'd see how long a server could last.... I got 744 days on Domino 4.6.4 [screen shotted] it actually lasted a bit more than that, but we had a power cut for quite a few hours and we ran out of backup juice, so I cant remember exactly how long it did go for. ( I have to admin there wasn't huge load on this box, and domino was the only thing that ran... but still. me thinks one day, i;ll try it with a 7 server.

  1. 15  Anthony Pope  | 11/29/2005 6:30:55 AM

    @7 and @14 .... bugger! I'll come back in a year or so then. :)

  1. 16  Ian Cherrill  | 11/29/2005 6:43:13 AM

    I don't understand. What was John doing for the last couple of hours then? ;-)

    I upgraded 5 Domino servers from 652FP1 to 654FP2 this morning. We have completed 80 server upgrades from 5 to 6.5 this year in 20 countries, only one of those needed backing out and only for one week (Java application problem).

    I have never used Outlook (only Outlook Express at home temporarily before I came to my senses) and never seen Exchange - I guess their upgrades must be tricky then?

    Ian

  1. 17  Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net | 11/29/2005 6:57:08 AM

    @15 - I had uptime of over a year from a Domino 4.6 server running on Windows 95 of all things!

    @16 - It all depends how you perform the upgrade. Some people prefer to manually consistency check all DBs or rebuild indexes after the upgrade. Although time consuming, it's not much extra labour but can improve things a fair bit sometimes.

  1. 18  Ian Cherrill  | 11/30/2005 5:46:00 AM

    @17 Yes - we did the full fixup/updall/compact for the 5 to 6.5 upgrade. I'm not sure about it being time-consuming or extra labour though - you don't have to sit and watch it!

    And we had Wild Bill drop in as consultant for the project, so it was an enjoyable experience as ever...

    Ian

  1. 19  Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net | 11/30/2005 6:35:11 AM

    @18 - Do the full job between point releases too, in honesty it's the only time these servers are ever offline so I take the opportunity to have a clean-up.

    I usually watch the screen, via remote desktop on my laptop, just in case I see a fault come up.

  1. 20  Irv Schor http://www.stoncor.com | 11/30/2005 2:42:13 PM

    Just did this on several servers from 5.x to 6.5.4 and it works like a charm. New Hardware, New OS (W2K to W2003), and new Domino without missing a beat. Try that on Exchange!(??)