Planning the upgrade

Plan the upgrade process in advance to ensure both the full benefit from the latest Precise release and adherence to your schedules and needs.

To ensure a quick and efficient upgrade, review the following sub-topics before beginning the procedure:

Prerequisites for the upgrade

Before planning the upgrade process, verify that:

• Your system meets all minimum requirements updating to the latest version as per the Precise minimum requirements for installation.
• The Precise installation that you want to upgrade is fully upgraded to the required previous version. If some agents are not yet upgraded to the required previous version , complete the upgrade to that version prior to attempting to upgrade to the latest version.
• Free disk space exists on the servers where the required previous version is installed. Minimum requirements include:
  • 0.5 GB on each server containing Precise Agents
  • 2.5 GB on the Precise Framework server
• 0.5 GB free disk space exists on the client server from which you want to execute the upgrade.
• Ensure that the processes running from the precise directory be excluded from anti-virus checks so that locked file errors are eliminated.

Server upgrade order

Your existing Precise installation typically spans many servers. Because the upgrade to the latest version of Precise is performed per server, you should plan in advance the order in which you will upgrade all servers comprising your existing Precise installation.

If you are unable to upgrade all servers at the same time and are updating only a few servers at once , review the implications of a phased upgrade described below.

The order of the server upgrade is:

1. Upgrade all FocalPoint servers.
2. Upgrade all other servers.

When starting the upgrade, select all the FocalPoints servers. You can add additional servers for the upgrade once the FocalPoints servers are upgraded or as part of the FocalPoint upgrade. In which case the server upgrade starts once the FocalPoint servers are completely upgraded.

Implications of a phased upgrade to the latest version of Precise

If you are unable to upgrade all servers at the same time and are updating only a few servers at once , the following limitations apply to your Precise system functionality:

• After starting an upgrade, you cannot install, edit, or uninstall instances on a server until the upgrade is complete.
• For installed Web and J2EE clusters, new instances are not installed until the cluster's servers are upgraded.
• If you created a Template Listener as part of you server's image , new Template Listener installations fail after the upgrade. You must recreate the Template Listener once the framework upgrade is complete.

Downtime of the monitored technologies

The upgrade process does not require any downtime of the monitored technologies.

Downtime of the Precise product

The upgrade process involves downtime of the Precise product itself as described below.

FocalPoints

When updating the servers with the Precise FocalPoints, the installed Precise performance monitoring system is not in operation. Once the Precise Framework upgrade is complete, Precise resumes all performance monitoring provided by the previous version of Precise.

The time required for updating a server with the Precise FocalPoints may vary depending on:

• the strength of the server with the FocalPoint
• the strength of the server where you are using AdminPoint to apply the upgrade
• the file transfer speed
• the amount of Precise technologies monitored by Precise
• the time it takes to perform post-application action items

In general, updating a server with a Precise FocalPoint is estimated at one hour. Updating a server with a FocalPoint is fastest when application of the upgrade is performed using AdminPoint on the Main node server with the Precise FocalPoint, and the upgrade is located on storage providing good response time to that server.

If you have a federated Precise deployment, then when updating the servers with the FocalPoint of the Main node, your entire Precise federated deployment is inoperable for performance monitoring. When updating another node's servers with a FocalPoint, only that node is inoperable for performance monitoring.

Non-FocalPoint agents

Precise agents do not collect performance data during an upgrade. The time required to upgrade a server running Precise agents varies depending on the technology type and the number of Precise agents on that server, as well as the factors described above regarding updating the server with the Precise FocalPoints. In general, updating a Precise agents server is estimated at 20 minutes.

Upgrade planning checklist

Use the following checklist to verify that you are ready to upgrade Precise to the latest version:

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