We are in the process or preparing to upgrade TS from 7.3.2 to 7.5 (again). Originally we were going to upgrade in place on a RHEL 5.5 server, but when we found out IW no longer supports RHEL 5, we decided to go with RHEL 6.6, but that required us to use completely new VMs, so we are now going to do a straight install on the new RHEL 6.6 VMs and then copy the backing store from 7.3.2 after installation.
When we had done an upgrade like this in the past (going from Solaris to Linux), we did a straight copy of the backing store, which took several hours, if I recall. This time we'd like to try a quicker option - using a snapmirror. Has anyone done this to copy a backing store between mounts? The sequence would be this:
1) Install 7.5 on new VM w/empty backing store
2) Shut down TS on new VM
3) create snapmirror to copy 7.3.2 backing store mount to new 7.5 mount
4) When copy complete, break the mirror
5) Run walk_archive script on backing store
6) Bring 7.5 up and verify backing store
At this point we will still be active in our 7.3.2 environment while we test 7.5 and make sure it's solid. Once we're ready to move all users to 7.5, we will basically repeat steps 2, 3, 4, and 6 and hope the backing store comes up with up-to-date data. Does this sound reasonable or insane?
We have had a snapmirror in place between our primary Production backing store and our Disaster Recovery backing store since we originally installed TeamSite 5 years ago. It works great. I just don't know if it's meant to be used for just a quick copy like this.
Thoughts? Experiences?
