[cisco-voip] CM 3.1(4b) - 3.3(4) upgrade in test environment

[Grabowski, David]

This may prove helpful to someone, and since I had to document this
anyway, I'm throwing it to the list.. YMMV..


We had two MCS 7825-1133's running CM 3.1(4b), with OS 2000-2-6. Our
plan was to upgrade them to CM 3.3(4). We wanted to do this in a "test"
environment before we upgrade our production system. Unfortunately, we
don't have any additional MCS-7825's, or even any Compaq DL320's (we're
a Dell shop).

So the plan was to stash Ghost images of our two MCS boxes onto a couple
of older Dell servers (PowerEdge 350's, actually). It didn't go as well
as expected, but in the process, we learned quite a lot...

After Ghosting, servers would not boot at all. Start-up would hang at
the "Starting windows2000" *black* screen (no GUI). An Analysis of the
old images on the boxes, and comparing them to the MCS images, we
determined that a different HAL was used on the MCS. The only way to fix
a HAL incompatibility (other than copying over all the necessary files
and crossing your fingers & toes), is to do a Windows2000 "in-place
repair/upgrade", from the W2K Server CD.

Using a W2K CD, I did just that. After doing so, the system *did* boot,
although there were numerous errors in the event logs, etc. That was
most likely because the W2K CD we used included Service Pack 2.
Installation of W2K SP4, followed by win-os-upgrade-2000-2-6 brought the
box to a state where everything appeared to be working fine. (Note that
if we did not do the W2K SP4 installation first, it would not work).

We cleaned up the box by uninstalling the HP-specific drivers and
agents, and reconfiguring the IP addresses to match our production
environment.

>From here, we basically followed the 3.3(4) upgrade procedure, with a
few minor (but significant) changes.

First, we installed Backup 3.5.53 and ran a backup. That was fairly
straightforward. We left the backup file on the D: drive, along with the
other files that are created by Backup (D:\Recover\backup.ini,
d:\Recover\dbname.ini)

We then ran the Upgrade Assistant and verified that both our publisher
and subscriber were in good shape for the 3.3(4) upgrade.

The next step in the Cisco upgrade procedure is to do a *fresh* OS
installation, using the "same server recovery method." We couldn't do
that, since the Cisco OS CD's won't install on our test servers. We
could either do a W2K install and hack the OS installation (as
documented previously on this mailing list), or uninstall everything so
we end up with a relatively "clean" platform. We opted for the latter.

Uninstallation of most of the apps was fairly straightforward. However,
CallManager 3.1 cannot be uninstalled! To remove it, we hacked the
registry and deleted all keys (HKLM\Software and HKLM\System\CCS)
related to Cisco, DCD, etc., rebooted, and then blitzed all the files
(C:\Program Files\Cisco, C:\Program Files\Cisco Systems, C:\Program
Files\common files\Cisco, C:\DCDSRVR, C:\MSSQL, etc etc etc). One more
reboot, and the machine was in a "clean" state. (Note -- leave
HKLM\Software\Cisco Systems\Model)

Here comes the "hack":

1. In the registry, create "HKLM\Sofware\Cisco Systems, Inc.\System
Info\OS Image" with a value of "2000.2.6". This is required so that the
3.3(4) installation will run. It wants to see at least 2000.2.4.

2. In the filesystem, create a file "D:\stiRecover.flg". It doesn't need
to contain anything. This is required so that the 3.3(4) installation
CD's will detect that this is a "same server recovery" and will run the
restore utility to restore the CallManager database

3. Run the 3.3(4) setup from the Cisco CD's.

Everything worked! Latest 3.3(4), SQL update, and win-os-upgrade
installed as well.

Subscriber upgrade was the same procedure -- but no backup/restore, and
run "servprep" first (although I don't think that was necessarily
required in my environment)


---------------------------------------------------
David Grabowski
Mizuho Securities USA, Equity Division
(212) 209-9349
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