Upgrading doesn’t have to be a difficult experience, but it does require planning. If you model your “as is” environment and your “to be” environment, prepare a written plan to get from A to B, review all necessary documentation, and then perform a dry run in a test environment, you can make a smooth migration of your production environment with minimal disruption to your production environment. Let’s talk about the process in more detail.
First you want to review and describe your “as is” environment. You want to specify your “to be” environment and you want to plan your transition from “as is” to “to be”. This process should be familiar to data modelers since it is the same one you use to design a database. Modeling or planning your upgrade provides you with the same benefits of avoiding unpleasant surprises and last minute production impacts to your upgrade, as it does when building a database.
Next, you want to review all necessary resources. You certainly want to review all the product documentation having to do with upgrading. Product documentation can involve erwin Data Modeler Edition Release Notes, new features and enhancements, system Information, installation considerations, general considerations, known Issues, fixed Issues, licensing, training, and so on. Remember the Mart Server Release Notes (again, new if you are starting from a version less than r9) which include sections on Mart Architecture, Installing and Configuring the Mart, and upgrade and troubleshooting in. Product Documentation is available both from within the product, and online at https://s38605.p1254.sites.pressdns.com/support.
If you have questions beyond the Product Documentation, you can search our Knowledge Base, raise a Chat, open a Case, or call us by going to https://s38605.p1254.sites.pressdns.com/support.
You also want to review any environmental documentation and any internal company change request processes and procedures. You want to contact and establish a rapport with any IT resources that you will need if you are starting at a version less than r9x. Moving from r7x or r8x to r9x means moving from a two tier environment to a three tier environment and involves an application server and new security protocols.
After you have familiarized yourself with all the resources, you want to create a plan with the required steps, time frames, action owners, and resource contact information. The complexity of your plan may be as minimal as a simple email to yourself or other parties involved, or a real project plan. It all depends on what is necessary, but this is the time to make sure it is all written down, so you can understand the scope of what needs to be done.
When you have gathered this information and created your plan, we are happy to provide you with a pre-installation or pre-upgrade consultation to walk through your plan together.
Lastly, one of the *critical* steps for a smooth upgrade is to set up a test environment and perform a dry run of your plan with a copy of your data. To use the data modeling paradigm again, a dry run is your physical exploration or prototyping of your logical plan. If you run into any surprises, we can help you work through them with no impact to your production environment. A dry run helps ensure that when you perform your production upgrade there won’t be any surprises.
Additional installation and upgrade resources are available on our support site. In particular, we have a video, How to Make a Smooth Migration from erwin Data Modeler r7x to r8x to r9x, which discusses this process in greater detail.
In conclusion, upgrading can be relatively painless, but you do have to model or plan where you are, where you want to go, what steps are necessary to get from the beginning to the end of your journey, what resources you need to execute these steps, and then you must perform a dry run to verify your plan.
And remember, if you need a hand, we are here to help at https://s38605.p1254.sites.pressdns.com/support.