Backing store conversion 6.1SP2 > 6.7.1 question

System

Hi DevNetters -
I'm researching backing store migration as one of the many steps of a 6.1 > 6.7.1 upgrade.

I'm getting a new Solaris server in a month or so and have the luxury of doing a fresh 6.7.1 install on the new machine. Meanwhile, I've wiped our old Solaris dev server, installed Solaris 10 on it and done a fresh 6.7.1 install on it. The server was barely up to the task, but the install succeeded and is running well.

Our dev server has a limited amount of available disk space available on it, so tarring up our production iw-store and moving it to the dev server isn't really an option. Since this is the case, I've started looking into iwmigrate. I had good experiences back with the 4.2 > 5.5 upgrade using iwconvert between two servers and was looking for a similar tool to do partial migrations between our 6.1 production repository and our new 6.7.1 repository.

After an unsuccessful initial try of mounting the production store to the dev server and trying iwmigrate, I've spent the past hour looking through other's posts on DevNet about trying this. They don't really paint a rosy picture, even mentioning the possibility of corrupting the remotely mounted production backing store.

Just like we did previously with the 4.2 > 5.5 conversion, our goal is to do a gradual migration from the 6.1 version on one machine to 6.7.1 on a new machine, running both servers as production during the migration period. This gives us time to address workflow, deployment and other conversion issues on a more individual basis for the different groups we support.

Having an incremental migration tool for individual branches would really help with this.

In your experiences, do you think that using iwmigrate in the fashion I've described is a possibility? If not, I'd appreciate any suggestions that would support the gradual migration scenario I've described.

Thanks in Advance,
Wally Box
Nike, Inc.