In Place Upgrade of NS O/S

[Mike Grueber]

In response to several questions from customers and partners regarding in-place upgrades of the operating system on various components of the Symantec Management Platform infrastructure (including the Notification Server), the Symantec Endpoint Management product and support team has published the following information regarding In-Place Operating System Upgrades.

[Clint]

Has any testing been done on upgrading Windows 2008 R2 to 2022?  It appears have to first upgrade to 2012 R2 then to 2022 but wondering about the stability of the NS and task/package servers afterwards, or would our SMP 8.1 even run on 2012 R2 and 2022 which would eliminate the possibility of an in-place OS upgrade altogether?

Another potential sticking point for us is that we're running an off-box SQL that's also on 2008 R2 and not sure if I can touch this guy so perhaps going back to plans on migrating Altiris over to all new servers would be best for us.  Previous docs indicated in-place OS upgrades weren't supported so I was surprised when I saw this post.

[Mike Grueber]

Hi Clint.

I believe that you are reading more into the statement than it actually entails.

As you know, ITMS 8,1 is no longer supported.  In addition, ITMS 8.1 never supported Windows Server 2022 or SQL Server 2022.  Support for those technologies was added to ITMS after ITMS 8.1 was EOL'd.

Whether you could first upgrade ITMS to a more recent version that supports your current version of WIndows Server and SQL Server and later upgrade Windows Server and SQL Server to newer versions is a different question.

Our statement is not intended to convey that there have been some magic new developments that support in-place upgrades from any version of Windows Server to any other version, or from any version of SQL Server to any other version. I doubt that Microsoft would even go that far.

The statement indicates that limited testing of in-place upgrades was performed and that no critical issues were identified.  Testing was performed in scenarios such as the following:

• Windows 2012 R2 Server to Windows 2016 Server
•  Windows 2012 R2 Server OS to Windows 2016 Server and then from Windows 2016 Server to Windows 2022 Server
•  Windows 2016 Server to Windows 2022 Server
•  Windows 2019 Server to Windows 2022 Server

No testing was performed using versions of these products that are no longer supported by Microsoft.

The statement does not guarantee that you will be able to successfully perform an in-place upgrade.  It implies that such upgrades are not strictly prohibited and can be successfully performed.  However, it advises customers to take precautions necessary to maintain or be able t restore their production environment.

It's unlikely that you're going to find that it's easy (or even possible) to directly upgrade from versions of Windows Server and SQL Server that are several generations old to the latest versions.  Our statement does not indicate you will be successful in that regard.  

I would strong advise you to consider other alternatives to a single-step, in-place upgrade from such old versions of these technologies. You may want to explore a multi-step process or do an off-box migration.  Whatever approach you choose, please take the precautions necessary.

[Clint]

Yes...I completely understand your points but did have a sliver of hope that I could avoid an off-box migration.  Guess a migration is safer in the end because I've seen others here do in-place OS upgrades (not Altiris stuff) where their app doesn't behave well even though the OS is supported so there's also the risk of carrying over problems from the older operating system.  At least you helped me decide that an off-box migration is probably my best bet.  Thanks!