Automic Automation V21 | Database Software Upgrade & UTF-8

[Tamman Montanaro]

Hello Admins,

My team is in preparations for upgrading our Automic Automation V21 installation to V24, however we have a few software and tools to modernize. We have outdated Windows OS as well as MS SQL Server 2017. Currently, we plan to upgrade the database software to MS SQL Server 2022 configured with UTF-8 (whilst running our current V21 application software and data) until we can stand up new servers and software compatible with version 24.

Will AA V21 be compatible with the new MS SQL Server 2022 configured in UTF-8 during the intermediary timeframe before we upgrade the rest of the servers and software? Once we switch over to the new UTF-8 database, can we depreciate the old, non-UTF-8 database? Conversely, Is it possible to point two different AA engines to the same database? 

In addition to these questions, should our team first only focus on the software/server upgrade before upgrading our V21 application? If we can do both, is it possible to transition over data from the old MS SQL Server 2017 non-UTF-8 to the new MS SQL Server 2022 on UTF-8? 

Thanks, 

Tamman Montanaro

[Markus Embacher]

Hi Tamman,

Automic V21 is not compatible with a SQL Server database in UTF-8 format.

For the migration for the non-UTF-8 database to the new UTF-8 database we offer an Action Pack which can be downloaded from our market place:
https://marketplace.automic.com/marketplace/browse/utf8-db-migration-action-pack

The documentation can be found at:
https://docs.automic.com/documentation/webhelp/english/ALL/components/DOCU/24.4.0/Automic%20Automation%20Guides/Content/Installation_Upgrade/UTF8_MSSQL_Migration.htm

The Action Pack and also Automic V21 are compatible with MS SQL Server 2017.

I recommend creating new up to date servers for V24 and the database and then using the action pack to migrate the data from the non-utf-8 into the utf8 environment. 

Regards, Markus

[Tamman Montanaro]

Hello and thank you, @Markus Embacher

I am looking at that documentation and making a upgrade/migration plan. The plan was always to use the migration pack, but we were hoping to separate out the DB migration steps and the actual upgrade as we will need to stand up a whole new set of servers in preparation for V24. Does this mean we will have to perform the DB migration and the V24 swap immediately afterwards? Is it possible to already have V24 installed on the new up-to-date servers, perform the DB migration on the new DB server, shutdown the old system, upgrade to V24 on the DB, and start everything?

Thanks for clarifying,

Tamman Montanaro

[Markus Embacher]

Hi Tamman,

of course you can prepare Automic V24 on a new server upfront.

*) prepare a new empty MS SQL database with UTF-8 character set mentioned in the documentation 
*) prepare new Automic server(s) and install V24 (do not run DBLoad - leave the database empty)
*) perform the INITIAL and optionally the REFRESH step while V21 is still up and running
*) run the FINAL step, shut down V21 and perform the SQL statements your received as a result of the FINAL step
*) you now have all the data in your UTF-8 MS SQL instance.
*) perform DBLoad against the UTF-8 database to upgrade the data to V24
*) start the new V24 Automation Engine

Your agents will have to connect to the new V24 instance. Depending on the number of agents you can point them manually to the new V24 instance, or you rename the V24 to the same name of the V21 server (of course you cannot have 2 servers with the same name in the network). You can also use an alias. Depending on the approach you may have to request a new certificate for TLS in case you have the server names in the SAN of the certificate. Pay also attention to the Windows UTF-8 settings on the AE servers mentioned in the documentation.

Depending on the size of your database I recommend creating a clone of the database and perform the UTF-8 migration using that clone in order to get the timings of the individual steps (INITIAL, FINAL). This will give you confidence regarding duration of the steps to make sure they fit into your maintenance window. 

Regards, Markus