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Have You Found a Good Order to Upgrade Netcool?

  • 1.  Have You Found a Good Order to Upgrade Netcool?

    Posted Thu March 29, 2018 04:25 PM

    My biggest concern right now is the lack of clean step by step procedures from IBM to do an upgrade.
    I can find plenty of documentation, sometimes documentation that contradicts each other, on the details of specific portions but no start here finish here in one document. I have been attempting to upgrade various pieces and parts of Netcool for about 8 months. Each time I end up finding a thread of an idea to chase down that requires some other piece of Netcool to be upgraded.

    Has anyone found a good way of knowing what order to upgrade in? Have you found a straight forward start to finish upgrade procedure?



  • 2.  RE: Have You Found a Good Order to Upgrade Netcool?

    Posted Fri March 30, 2018 05:03 AM

    Hi Michael,

    I second your concern given number of components of NOI, but my advice is, irrespective you are a NOI client or licensed for stand-alone components of Netcool, the upgrade procedure shouldn’t have much impact…read on.

    First and foremost, the upgrade isn’t really an upgrade, it’s always side by side install and migrating data from previous instance to newer versions. We never recommend IN-PLACE upgrade for production deployment, though it’s doable for OMNIbus Core and same rule doesn’t apply for most NOI Components such as WebGUI, ITNM, Impact etc. Well, if it is Test/Dev environment, you can have multiple versions running in parallel on same servers…again, its side by side installation.

     

    Second rule is, whether you are licensed for NOI or stand-alone products, always stick to a specific NOI version (for e.g. the currently latest release is NOI v1.4.1.1) and you can see all components at https://ibm.biz/Bdjuqe. The point is, you must ensure to install newer versions per that that table, so that you are avoiding any compatibility issues. This combination has been tested by IBM SQA & IVT teams..hence the recommendation.

     

    Third – For most NOI stack you can rely on best practices at https://ibm.biz/BdZvTP and I do agree those best practices are missing both Network Mgmt (ASM - https://ibm.biz/BdZvTM , ITNM & ITNCM ) and Network Performance Mgmt (NPI ) in the mix. I would suggest you rely on Webinars with-in this community along with Docs. There is also Redbook on deployment of NOI at https://ibm.biz/BdZvTm .

     

    Last but not least, the order of installation may change for each environment, but starting with Database (along with setting up schemas for all components like I’ve listed @ https://ibm.biz/BdZBhc slide#6 onwards), followed by OMNIbus, probes, then GUI and adding rest on top should the way.

     

    Going forward, I think we’ll try to club all in one document…but appreciate your concerns and feedback. Do let that feedback coming in for betterment.

     

    Good luck and Happy Friday,

    Krishna.