CA Service Management

We are planning on doing a Service Catalog upgrade from 12.9 to 14.1.  At the same time we will also upgrade PAM and EEM. All new versions will be installed on new servers.

The Service Catalog is clustered and does not share the MDB database with any other CA product.

We are planning on doing the installations/upgrade of the production environment over a weekend, a.k.a. “go-live weekend”.

Which, if any, parts of the new 14.1 Service Catalog production environment can be prepared or installed in advance of the go-live weekend without disrupting the current 12.9 production environment?

We wish to reduce the risk of discovering unexpected problems during the go-live weekend and if possible shorten the time it takes to complete the work during the go-live weekend.

We have reviewed the documentation on the wiki: How to Upgrade CA Service Catalog [1] but this only details what we need to do on the go-live weekend. Can any of these steps be done in advance?

We have run through the Service Catalog 12.9 to 14.1 upgrade in the test environment using the production MDB. We have also installed the new PAM and EEM versions in the test environment, so we know the upgrade works there.

Goals for the production environment:

Service Catalog 12.9 cluster server 1: Install 14.1 on a new server

Service Catalog 12.9 cluster server 2: Install 14.1 on a new server

PAM 4.2.2 server: Install 4.3.1 on a new server

EEM vX.X server: Install vY.Y on a new server

SQL Server 2012 for the SC MDB and PAM databases: Move to a new SQL 2012 server.

Apart from the ‘by-the-book’ option documented by CA, we are considering two options.
Does anyone have experience of this or similar scenarios and have som good advice to offer?

Option 1:
Prior to the go-live weekend we install the new SC 14.1 servers with an empty mdb database. (Is the ‘fresh install state’ of this installation somehow recorded in the mdb or the registry of the SC 14.1 servers?)
On the go-live weekend we run the web-based setup tool and configure the new 14.1 servers to use a copy of the 12.9 production mdb. Does this cause the web-based setup tool to check the 12.9 mdb and start an upgrade of it to 14.1? Or can this operation be done with the setup-tool on the Service Catalog 14.1 installation media?

Option 2:
Prior to the go-live weekend we install the new SC 14.1 servers and configure them to use a copy of the 12.9 production mdb. (Is the ‘ugrade state’ of this installation recorded in the mdb or registry of the new SC14.1 servers?)
On the go-live weekend we run the web-based setup tool and configure the new 14.1 servers to use a copy of the 12.9 production mdb. Does this cause the web-based setup tool to check the 12.9 mdb and start an upgrade of it to 14.1? Or can this operation be done with the setup-tool on the Service Catalog 14.1 installation media?

Best regards,

Heikki Ikonen

Netgain

Hello Heikki,

I don't think either of your options are going to work. Is there a reason you don't want to do the upgrade 'by-the-book'?

Hi Lindsay,

We're just looking for what we can prepare or install in advance of the go-live weekend. But this is as an secondary alternative to doing the upgrade 'by the book', with no shortcuts.

Best regards,

Heikki Ikonen

Netgain 

The safest way to approach this is to first do the upgrade in a test environment (best would be a copy of your production environment). That way you can predetermine potential issues and record timings to estimate how much down time you will need.

Hi,

What my colleague Heikki want to know in other words is if the setup/install utility in the SC 14.1 ISO-file (also known as common installer) or the web-based one performs any kind of validation. Then if the utility run the upgrade scripts if we point out an SC 12.9 database afterwards.

Regards,

Andreas Eriksson

Netgain AB