Vault upgrades - The mad methods of keeping current

STEPHEN PORATH: All right, we can go ahead and get started. So thank you everybody for coming. Good morning. We'll be going through the Vault upgrades, mad methods of keeping current. So we'll start with introducing Matt, your primary speaker or primary upgrade coach here. So Matt, go ahead.

MATT WILLIAMS: I've gotten lots of help from Stephen. My name's Matt Williams. I'm a Systems Analyst at Komatsu Mining, specifically the underground division that we're going to be-- all the stats and stuff you hear are just going to be about the underground portion. They make large industrial underground mining equipment. I've been there for 15 years.

What Systems Analyst means is basically I wear a lot of hats, and one of them is Vault administration. I also do programming with Inventor, and AutoCAD, and Vault, among some other things. I left some business cards on the table if anybody wants one. If they run out, I have some older ones that have the old company name on them, but I'll hand them out if those run out and people still want them. That's about it.

STEPHEN PORATH: All right, thank you, Matt. And is this not working now? All right, we'll use the keyboard. And my name is Stephen Porath. I am a Designated Support Specialist with Autodesk. I handle enterprise priority support, so some of our Vault customers in that sector.

I have been doing Vault support with Autodesk the entire time I've been here. Prior to that, I have been dealing with supporting enterprise applications for at least 15 years, primarily IAS applications with a SQL Server database. So Vault is obviously a good fit from that perspective.

Outside of that, I'm kind of trying to learn Autodesk Alias, which is a absolutely very complex application used for industrial design. And I like running, playing games, and traveling with family.

All right, so we'll start with a quick survey. So if you guys could-- show of hands-- how many of you here have completed at least one Vault upgrade in your time here? And, along the same lines, how many have done three or more? All right. And, topping out with-- how many have done five or more? All right, pretty close to what I was expecting. All right.

So that kind of leads into why this class. So I've been with Autodesk over four years, and I've participated in roughly 15 to 20 upgrades with customers, a number of additional upgrades within my own environments, testing customer's environments, and whatnot, but I'll say like 15 or 20 live upgrades.

And observations there-- upgrades are hard. And it requires a lot of coordination. There are tons of moving parts and pieces throughout that. And, as I've been with Autodesk, Matt has done at least two, if not three, Vault upgrades. And I have seen that there is definitely a better way of doing those. And I felt like going through this with him with everybody here would be of benefit to everybody. So just to give some background on the Komatsu Mining Vault setup-- and I'll let Matt kind of take over for that.

MATT WILLIAMS: Yeah, we have-- just speaking about the underground mining division here with our Vault set-up, we have several hundred users. I think the number's probably closer to 600.

STEPHEN PORATH: Yeah, I think it's 600 total, and then anywhere up to 200 concurrently.

MATT WILLIAMS: Yeah, so we have 20 app servers, and those are spread out within six work groups. So we have six separate databases. Our files store-- there's about three million unique files with-- I think the actual files in the file store is about 4.5 million, or is it a total of about almost four terabytes. So it's fairly complex, but it seems to serve us well. So we keep it around.

STEPHEN PORATH: Yeah, and they kind of essentially have a database server or work group established in just about every of the major regions throughout the globe, so it is a complicated operation. So the agenda here-- we're just going to kind of go through preparation. There's quite a bit there, and it's a very important step, in my opinion. We'll go through the upgrade, migration, and then cover some tips and tricks. And we have a question and answer planned for the end, but I will say you're more than welcome, if we're talking about something, you have a question, raise your hand. We'll try to address it and, if we need to talk after, that's fine, too. We'll both be available after.

MATT WILLIAMS: If anyone wants to hunt me down, I don't have a problem with that.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] just what we're doing. We've had Workgroups, finally got Professional. Is that a major change [INAUDIBLE]?

STEPHEN PORATH: So question-- and let me know if I state it wrong-- you probably were on Vault Workgroup moving to Vault Professional. The major change there is kind of what you make out of it. Vault Professional has more functionality than Vault Workgroup. But, you can use Vault Professional basically identically to how you would use Vault Workgroup.

MATT WILLIAMS: And the upgrade path is the same. I mean, you can upgrade from Workgroup, too.

AUDIENCE: What [INAUDIBLE] uploaded [INAUDIBLE].

STEPHEN PORATH: OK, yes. So that's, I think, probably technically more on the licensing side of things that were this change you're talking about, basically. The thin client, as we call it, able to access that without consuming licenses, and it acts as a viewer that-- a lot of users, that's all they need-- so yeah. Absolutely.

So yeah, if you have questions, perfect. Let us know. So we'll move on to preparation. I have a Benjamin Franklin quote that I think is pretty adequate for this. By failing to prepare, you're preparing to fail. Sorry. So I thought it was important to maybe just touch on why people are upgrading. I think some of the reasons is pretty obvious. And you guys are probably largely going to be covered with what I have seen, and we'll take Matt's perspective after. But, typically, in my experience, the upgrades are driven by the clients.

So whether that's AutoCAD, Inventor, Revit sometimes, they add functionality and features that the users want. And that drives the need to update Vault to accommodate those applications being upgraded. And the ties to the CAD applications in general are what I typically see as the upgrade reasons. Now, there's certainly hardware scenarios and things like where you'd be changing hardware, going to a new operating system as well. You may need to upgrade there, too. So Matt, do you have anything?

MATT WILLIAMS: No, yeah. That's exactly right. I mean, if you want to stay on the latest software, it's best to have the Vault with the same rev. I'm not even sure anymore that you can run a different version of Inventor, or something like that, and have Vault different, and still use the add-ins.

AUDIENCE: So the rule of three applies [? here? ?] [? So if you ?] do that [INAUDIBLE], I have two [? servers. ?] One's [INAUDIBLE]. But, so [INAUDIBLE] upgraded right [INAUDIBLE] roll that back to where it was? [INAUDIBLE] upgrade my Vault [INAUDIBLE] my applications [INAUDIBLE].

STEPHEN PORATH: I'm sorry, your application--

AUDIENCE: My applications [INAUDIBLE].

STEPHEN PORATH: OK.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE], and you were saying that's [INAUDIBLE]? I mean, I'm not saying for Vault, but we [INAUDIBLE].

STEPHEN PORATH: Yeah, I mean I would absolutely-- a week or two of not being able to access Vault, to me--

AUDIENCE: No, no. I can access the Vault [INAUDIBLE].

STEPHEN PORATH: Yes. I'll get into the caveats there, actually, next slide, so I'll just advance. So yeah, your clients are basically capable of only connecting to older servers. So you can't have an-- I'm sorry-- a newer server version, older clients can connect to, the reverse direction not the case. And that is technically two years back. It's three versions total, the same version as the server, the year previous, and the year previous for that. So that is the functionality that we support connection from, and I am not aware of any method to get outside of that. But that's what we support and test for.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

STEPHEN PORATH: OK, yeah. Yeah, and so that method-- and we'll kind of get into details with it, but that method is exactly what I would typically recommend if you have a large number of clients, such as what Komatsu Mining has. And your client applications, I think-- in support, I get questions about, let's say, the CAD applications, and, you know-- can we upgrade the CAD application and have it work? And, if the CAD application is a newer version than the server, then no. You can't do that.

You basically have to advance the server first then anything client related second. And, if you're advancing clients more than two versions, then you basically have to upgrade them as well at the same time. So on the server side, we support upgrade from up to two versions forward. So say you're starting out in 2016, the most you would be able to upgrade to in a single step is 2018. You can certainly go to 2019, but it's a two step process.

And, you know, I think, when you're looking at the server side of things, checking your last version-- because there are certain versions of Vault that we'll check to make sure you are in a compatible operating system. So checking that, making sure that that is within support, is highly encouraged, if not required. And the SQL Server version, as well, is hugely important. You want to make sure that that is as high as it needs to be before you start the upgrade process.

MATT WILLIAMS: And, if you're doing a Workgroup install, they all need to be at the same version, or you can run into problems.

STEPHEN PORATH: Yeah, so a Workgroup installation-- two or more SQL servers all need to basically be on identical versions. All right, so basically kind of outlined the required preparation steps, and the more the better-- but, these are kind of the guidelines I would use. First is getting to know your environment. There are more than a single scenario that I've encountered, at least, where somebody has inherited a Vault that they're not familiar with. They may be a new employee replacing one who had left, so they don't really know the environment. And you have to know that before you're going to upgrade. You're going to be in big trouble If you don't.

We'll get into how you can check into some of that if you end up in that bad situation, where you're not familiar with the environment. Check into your versions at that time, too, as previously mentioned, what's compatible and everything. I would say building and modifying your plan, if you don't have one, is an absolute necessity. I would follow it. Update it. Just make sure you can read it so that, when you're executing it, you know what to do.

And then test that plan. So you back there, I know you mentioned you used virtualization for testing. That's an excellent way to do that. And, if you don't have virtualized solution, real solution is just as acceptable. It's harder to roll back, but you have to test this. You do not want to walk into an upgrade not having tested the migration and just the installation.

So it's also a good opportunity to look at your backup strategy, how you are backing up database, file store, so on, and also probably a good time to make sure that, at least throughout the year, you're backing up your configs, primarily the web config. Because, if you end up in a scenario where you reinstall, that web config basically gets written in the out of box format, which may not be what you've been using.

So another survey real quick-- how many of you guys have multiple Vault servers in play? Show of hands-- all right. And how many have files that are replicated across those servers? Last one-- how many do database replication?

AUDIENCE: Does that mean multiple ADMS?

STEPHEN PORATH: Not necessarily multiple ADMS, but multiple SQL instances-- so it'd be Workgroup replication, which I tend to, incorrectly, not use Workgroup. Workgroup is the Vault term. So basically have a subscriber and publisher and could have a number of subscribers, similar to Komatsu.

So just to touch on that for those that don't know, I encounter a number of people that think they are replicating and are not actually. So there's basically the two that we just covered. There's file replication. There's Workgroup replication, or full replication, database replication, however you want to call it. File replication is just replicating your files between multiple sites, multiple servers. And they have Workgroup replication, that is replicating your data between multiple work groups or servers. And I'll go into kind of advantages and disadvantages of those.

File replication is really just replicating your file store, and it is copying files from one site to another, or one server to another. It typically involves AVFS as the solution, or Autodesk Vault File Server. And that was introduced in 2014. So if you head end replication prior to that, which a lot of people did, it would basically have had to be the alternative, which was Workgroup.

Some of the advantages on the file store replication is you're moving your large pieces of data over to a localized server. All of the web traffic and communication still gets directed back to its most local ADMS server, or kind of your primary server. And, without getting into a lot of the detail there, most of the complicated traffic, if you were to have an ADMS that was remotely placed, it makes a lot of database calls every second. And it will kind of clog network connections in a not great way.

So putting AVFS remotely, allows you to place the file store remotely, and then the clients are making a large hop to an ADMS server. But it is just web based traffic as opposed to SQL traffic and basically creates an experience that is better on infrastructure and simpler to support. That said, Workgroup replication is the alternative, and I'll let Matt fill in anything I miss here. But it's basically an ADMS with a SQL Server. It involves a publisher and a subscriber at minimum. You can have many subscribers. So these guys have five subscribers. I think there may be another company that my group works with that has maybe more like 15, 20. So I'm sure there is a limit, but I don't think you would ever get bigger than 15 or 20 anyhow, or not by much.

Merger replication is the type of replication that Vault uses. That's just a Microsoft SQL Server replication method. It allows for better handling of sites that are frequently experiencing network difficulties. It allows them to continue working throughout, essentially, an outage, as long as there is power. So it is a little bit more fault tolerant.

That said, you usually have a 14 day retention period, which means you have to reestablish that connection within 14 days. If you do not, you basically have to re-initialize that site, anyhow. And that is not something that you can get around at all that I'm aware of.

And this was available on both the current version of Vault and older versions as well. It can include files, too. And a lot of times it does. These guys have at least two sites that have basically their entire file store for any given day. So it replicates, I think, probably midnight or something like that, Eastern time.

MATT WILLIAMS: Yeah, once a day.

STEPHEN PORATH: So files can be replicated as well, but it requires that SQL component. And, as I previously mentioned on the other one, it is more dependent on SQL traffic being accommodated. So SQL traffic typically requires very low latency. It's less about the throughput, and it's more about the latency. It's very chatty traffic.

So one last prep item that you want to always make sure you're thinking about is your rollback. So you know, you may have multiple ways that you will check in on this throughout an upgrade and make your decision. But know how you are going to roll back if you hit a catastrophic issue. Virtualization adds a lot of help and functionality there, but there are old methods, too, that work just as well. They take a lot longer, but something to always make sure you're considering in this. So we'll move on to the actual upgrade itself. So Matt, you want to go ahead and kick this one off with the backup?

MATT WILLIAMS: Yeah, sure. So the way I like start an upgrade-- and, if you can do this, that's great. I like to find [? its ?] outage time, like over a weekend, and get it going as early as possible on Friday. We've been fortunate enough to have our users stay out of the Vault starting at about noon on a Friday. And the reason I like to do that is because all the people I depend on for support haven't left for home yet, and I don't have to call them up and say, hey, this is an emergence. I have a problem. Can you come back into the office, or get on the VPN, or whatever. Everybody's still there.

So as far as the first thing that we do, is start the SQL backup-- we do not use Vault's backup scheme, primarily because our file store would not be able to back up in time to do the upgrade.

STEPHEN PORATH: Just start two weeks later. [LAUGHS]

MATT WILLIAMS: And our file stores are already backed up. We have a separate file server that's taken care of by our infrastructure department, so we're fortunate there as well. So at about noon on a Friday, I ring up the DBA and say, OK, you can start the SQL backups. And, before I do that, I have a little script that runs that kills IAS on all the servers so users can't connect. As soon as you stop IAS, the users are done.

So he gets those backups going. And, kind of in parallel, while he's doing the backups, I like to open up my remote desktop manager, which is great tool. If you don't use that, Google it. And I get all my app servers logged into in my remote desktop manager, and I start uninstalling all the current Vault's software. I don't like to do in-place upgrades. That's just me. I like to uninstall it and reinstall it.

STEPHEN PORATH: And sometimes that's required, too, if you run into problems.

MATT WILLIAMS: It makes me feel cleaner. I don't know. So I do that. And, after everything is uninstalled-- well, before I uninstall it, I save a copy of my web configs. He mentioned the web configs earlier. I like to save a copy of the current web configs, [? at ?] [? at ?] least one of the app servers, because I try to keep the settings the same. I get everything uninstalled, and then I start reinstalling all the new software.

So say you're reinstalling, going to 2019. I do that. And it's important-- after you install the software, it pops up that message and says, do you want to run ADMS? Do not do that. You do not want to start ADMS after you install the software, because that will start your migration and start trying to modify the SQL databases.

STEPHEN PORATH: Which he is possibly still backing up-- I mean, with 20 servers, he may not actually still be doing the backup. But, yes, he wants to make sure his backup is done first.

MATT WILLIAMS: You do not want to open the ADMS console until the backups are done and you're ready to start actually modifying the database. And, what installing the software while it's backing up does for me-- it allows me to save some time. I get the software installed. And, also, it lets me know if I'm going to have any problems actually getting the software installed.

Say there's some server configurations, and I get errors during the software install, and I just cannot get the new software to install. And say I play around with it for a little bit, still can't get it to install. I can say, all right, we're going to have to try this a different weekend. And I undo what I did, put the old version back on, and you're right back where you're at. And it's fairly easy to do.

STEPHEN PORATH: Yeah and, if you migrate, that becomes a much more difficult situation, because then you're dealing with SQL backups that you'd have to go back to.

MATT WILLIAMS: Once you start migrating, like Stephen said, then it's a whole other world. Just getting the software installed is fairly simple to reverse.

AUDIENCE: OK, so I had one question.

MATT WILLIAMS: Sure.

STEPHEN PORATH: Sure.

AUDIENCE: When you're doing your migration, are you doing your upgrade to your software on your SQL Server first, before for you do-- so your operating system now actually has to be upgraded in the meantime, at the same time?

MATT WILLIAMS: Yeah. The way I handle that is, if the software needs to be upgraded, a lot of our SQL servers are on actual hardware. And a lot of our app servers are on virtual machines. And, if the OS needs to be upgraded, I tell them to make me a new virtual machine. And I'll use that to install the new application on. And I get rid of the old server. I don't even want to deal with it. I don't deal with OS upgrades. We just create new servers.

AUDIENCE: We're currently on Windows 7, and corporate is talking about Windows 10.

MATT WILLIAMS: So you're using Windows 7 for your servers?

AUDIENCE: Yeah.

MATT WILLIAMS: OK.

STEPHEN PORATH: Do you have Vault Basic?

AUDIENCE: No, we have Vault Professional.

STEPHEN PORATH: Then you definitely do not want to be on Windows 7 for--

AUDIENCE: All IAS [INAUDIBLE].

STEPHEN PORATH: You're sure you're talking the server side, though, and not the client side? Because that is not a supported version.

AUDIENCE: It's a little shaky, which is why I said I think we need 10.

STEPHEN PORATH: Well, not even 10.

AUDIENCE: We don't have any faith that 10 is going to be any better.

STEPHEN PORATH: 10 is not supported, either. So the Vault server environment-- Vault Basic is the only one that supports a client OS. The Workgroup or Professional needs to be on Windows Server.

MATT WILLIAMS: You can still get it installed, I think.

STEPHEN PORATH: Yes, I run it daily, but I do not do production work on that.

AUDIENCE: So we should using [INAUDIBLE] server.

MATT WILLIAMS: What version of Vault do you have?

AUDIENCE: Currently, we're on 18.

MATT WILLIAMS: You're on 20-- you should, at a minimum, have server 2012 R2 or 2016.

AUDIENCE: OK.

STEPHEN PORATH: Yes.

AUDIENCE: They decided we are now moving over to an all Autodesk house. But even though we're on subscription, they're not going to upgrade every year. Every other year, they'll upgrade.

MATT WILLIAMS: Sure, every other year's a good plan, I think.

AUDIENCE: Yeah, so at this point, the IT group has virtually finished their testing [INAUDIBLE], and they're about to give it their blessing. So now that's going to get passed out to everybody, and we'll move up to 10.

STEPHEN PORATH: Tell him to hit the brakes on that and get Server. The reason you want Server-- to me, at least-- a lot of the policies in a company do not apply the same way to a server. You don't. Go ahead, Matt. Sorry. No, no. Go ahead.

MATT WILLIAMS: What's the issue with running Server? Is it cost, or they just don't--

AUDIENCE: I really don't know, because that's like the next [INAUDIBLE].

MATT WILLIAMS: Because, if it's not cost--

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

MATT WILLIAMS: If it's not cost, it's kind of a no-brainer to me to put Server on there.

STEPHEN PORATH: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: I mean, a lot of what I'm learning here, I'm bringing back to our guy who handles it all.

STEPHEN PORATH: Yeah, and I don't know if-- that's a good point. I don't even know that there is a drastic cost difference between just standard Server and, say, Windows 10. I'm sure there is a cost difference, but--

AUDIENCE: He had asked me to find out what the [INAUDIBLE], because we're getting ready for that whole swap over to 10.

MATT WILLIAMS: And it doesn't have to be an enterprise version of Server. It can be the cheapest, just standard. Like Windows 2012 R2 standard, or preferably 2016 standard--

AUDIENCE: And they should be able to communicate without a problem?

MATT WILLIAMS: Right, yeah.

STEPHEN PORATH: Yeah, I mean, Server is more equipped to deal with a large number of users. But I would also probably use the opportunity to make sure your hardware is properly spec'd out.

AUDIENCE: That's the other thing, too. We use [INAUDIBLE] better in AutoCAD and [INAUDIBLE] in conjunction [INAUDIBLE] dropping advanced [INAUDIBLE] at the end of the year, because it just doesn't talk to anything.

STEPHEN PORATH: Sure.

AUDIENCE: And we need to at least go into AutoCAD. So there are some issues there.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] .

AUDIENCE: I'm sorry?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] ?

AUDIENCE: It doesn't. I mean, we need to get into AutoCAD. I'm there with you. We tried to get it into Inventor, and it's like no, I want where I came from. And it's like you can get about half of the structure. And that's not helping us.

STEPHEN PORATH: Yeah, well, I wish I could offer you something on that. I'm not an advanced deal guy at all, but--

AUDIENCE: Yeah, I tried to warn them on that one.

AUDIENCE: Just be aware, because I did this last week, [INAUDIBLE] testing on the clients, you have to have Windows NET, I think, 4.7.

STEPHEN PORATH: Yeah, .NET framework 4.7-- yeah.

AUDIENCE: Oh, for the framework.

AUDIENCE: Yeah, and for Windows 7 it's a different [INAUDIBLE] Windows 7 is [INAUDIBLE].

STEPHEN PORATH: Ah, yes.

MATT WILLIAMS: And that's for 2019?

AUDIENCE: Yes.

STEPHEN PORATH: Yeah.

MATT WILLIAMS: 20--

AUDIENCE: Even '18 [INAUDIBLE].

MATT WILLIAMS: Oh, '18 I thought was 4.6, and I could be wrong.

AUDIENCE: 4.7-- Windows--

STEPHEN PORATH: Yeah, I thought it was six as well.

AUDIENCE: It'll communicate with 4.6, because we're currently in the process of upgrading all our clients to Windows 10. We're [INAUDIBLE].

AUDIENCE: [? You're ?] doing the same thing.

AUDIENCE: Sort of-- we're a little more [? further ?] [? on ?] [? the-- ?]

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

STEPHEN PORATH: Yeah-- no, no. It's a very-- no, no. And those definitely are good things to cover, too. I'll try to swing back to it when we hit the troubleshooting, because that is one of the things that you may encounter, either on the client side or definitely on the server side. You can run into version dependencies that are not just Windows and SQL that are important to know.

AUDIENCE: And you got to have all the system [INAUDIBLE] 5,700, Windows 10 [? some-- ?] it's got to be a [INAUDIBLE].

STEPHEN PORATH: Yeah, and it's probably the creator's update maybe. Yeah, the Windows build number-- I don't know those.

MATT WILLIAMS: 1609--

STEPHEN PORATH: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] because I [? looked ?] last week [INAUDIBLE], and now, before I can do our upgrade, I got to make sure all the machines are--

STEPHEN PORATH: Yeah, that have that already-- yeah, good point.

MATT WILLIAMS: So I think I left off just-- I got the software installed.

STEPHEN PORATH: Yeah, so let me-- well, so obviously, the software installation-- I think most of you who have done an upgrade are familiar with this. But the software installation usually is going to take somewhere from probably 5 to 30 minutes, if you don't encounter any errors, and obviously you can sometimes.

MATT WILLIAMS: And the key here is, once you hit that button, if it pops up something-- I'm just going to say it again. Don't open the ADMS console yet and take any chances. Just close that. Just say run it later. Close it down so you don't start your migration. And the last step-- or, maybe this is the step at the beginning of the migration. Just get your IS back up and running.

STEPHEN PORATH: Yes, make sure it's up and running. It should be started as a part of the installation, but good check.

MATT WILLIAMS: I have a batch file that does it. As long as you have access, the user you run it has access to all the servers-- if you're not familiar with it, IS reset is the command. There's a switch that you can specify the server name. You just say slash stop and then slash start to-- it's pretty simple. I just have a batch file that goes out and does it to all the servers. It takes about a minute, and it's a good way to keep your users from connecting.

STEPHEN PORATH: Yeah, you could just look up remotely restarting IAS. It is a pretty straightforward thing. And IAS reset is the command-- Windows commands, from a command line. Usually, if you do a space forward slash question mark, you can get all the parameters that you could enter for that commandlet, or whatever it's called. And as noted on here, defer running the ADMS console. So do not do that yet.

MATT WILLIAMS: And the software that gets upgraded could be ADMS or AVFS, as he mentioned. I just kind of treat them all the same.

STEPHEN PORATH: Yes, and both install very, very similarly and all that. So I felt like everybody probably needed an inspirational quote, so-- success is where preparation and opportunity meet-- Bobby Unser, a IndyCar driver. All right, so moving on, we'll get onto the migration. But, we'll start, real quick, because this is something important to do before you start that migration-- look at your web config.

So I have kind of the two sections that Komatsu tends to focus on there. But, one key takeaway is backup your original before you do the upgrade so you can refer back to it. And, Matt, I'll let you touch on these.

MATT WILLIAMS: Yeah, the first one, I think, if I see correctly, if it's the timeout, why you modify that is, if you have a large database, like we do, that's 150 gig SQL database, whenever you do that migration, it's going to take a while. It could take a half an hour. And the default for the default command is, I think--

STEPHEN PORATH: These should be the defaults up here.

MATT WILLIAMS: Oh, you have the defaults up?

STEPHEN PORATH: So default command of 360--

MATT WILLIAMS: Yeah, 360, which is 6 minutes.

STEPHEN PORATH: Yep.

MATT WILLIAMS: And, if I open up my ADMS console, and start my main database migration, I'm going to get an error after six minutes, or whatever, and it's going to timeout. And, if that happens, I know I forgot to set that number higher on the web config. I usually set mine to, I think, 7,200 in about two hours, and the long command I pick something even bigger than that.

I don't worry. I'm not worried if Vault hangs up on a shorter command and doesn't timeout, because I'm just going to kill it. I just want to make sure that it doesn't time out on the commands I want to actually run. And the second one-- we set our V logs to a different directory. If you don't know how to do that, and your C-drives are filled up because you forgot to get rid of V logs, it's a good idea to move those V logs to a drive other than your OS.

STEPHEN PORATH: Yeah, and the default value there, if you can see it-- keep number of days set to negative 1. That means forever. So you could change that to something else. However, I do like to keep those logs.

MATT WILLIAMS: Yeah, I like to keep them.

STEPHEN PORATH: And, just as part of housekeeping, go and clean them up once a year-- they shouldn't be prohibitively large at that point. But, they might be, and you're definitely better off not having them on C.

MATT WILLIAMS: Yeah, ours get large, because we log user transactions. So they get pretty large.

STEPHEN PORATH: Yeah. Any questions on that?

AUDIENCE: Matt, would you do us a favor? Can you turn your volume up just a little bit?

MATT WILLIAMS: Oh, I'm sorry. Maybe my mic was falling down.

STEPHEN PORATH: I don't know if there's actually a volume control on it, either, but it may just be position.

MATT WILLIAMS: I'm sorry.

STEPHEN PORATH: It's all right. Thank you for asking that, because--

MATT WILLIAMS: Is that better?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

MATT WILLIAMS: OK, I think it was just out of position.

STEPHEN PORATH: Thank you for asking that, because, yes, it's not obvious to me up here. Sorry.

MATT WILLIAMS: Did you need me to repeat something, anyone?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

[LAUGHTER]

STEPHEN PORATH: I don't know that we have time.

MATT WILLIAMS: If you think you missed something, I'm happy to talk to anyone after class. I was just explaining our web configs there, and how was the timeouts-- I increase those so there aren't any problems during the actual migrations, because the default of six minutes just isn't enough for our large SQL databases. And then the other one was V logs that we move to a different drive other than the OS, just in case the OS would fill up from the V logs. That's not a good thing.

AUDIENCE: Do you guys use SSL.

MATT WILLIAMS: We currently do not use SSL. I hope no one from our IT department is here to hear me say that, but right now we're just using the regular. I do have instructions, and I've tested it, but we don't have it like that in production.

STEPHEN PORATH: Yeah, it's kind of hit or miss, where I would see it from support. A lot of companies don't. They rely on the information being kind of capped at least inside the company. So once the web config is updated to your satisfaction, that is where you're going to want to actually launch the ADMS console. If you're dealing with a replicated environment, this is your publisher's ADMS console. Ideally, if you had multiple connected to that, it's the one that is connected over the highest speed line, least latency, all of that.

So you're going to open it. You will get prompted with a question about migrating your data, as you see up on the screen. This is going to migrate system related databases. So basically, Knowledge Vault Master is the primary one. Anybody who doesn't know what that is, it is where the user settings and, basically, information pertaining to all of your Vaults are stored, but none of the data related to your files or anything like that. Then, we'll move on to migrating your Vaults and content centers. I'll let Matt-- you go ahead and take over for this one.

MATT WILLIAMS: Yeah, so once you get your Knowledge Vault Master upgraded, after the initial opening of ADMS-- and this is on the publisher again. I'm going to restate that, if you're doing multi-Workgroup. It's going to ask you if you want to upgrade your Vaults and your libraries.

I like to change everything to no. That's just my preference. I like to do it one at a time so I can monitor what's going on with SQL, as I'm doing it, a little easier. I can catch any problems, if any were to crop up. So I go ahead and choose no on those. Is that the right screen that's up there?

STEPHEN PORATH: Yeah, so I have yes, because I think it probably is--

MATT WILLIAMS: That's the default.

STEPHEN PORATH: It depends on what you're doing, yeah.

MATT WILLIAMS: I mean, it doesn't matter. You can choose that. I like to click no. And then, if you do that, you can go down-- once your ADMS comes up, you can go down to where your Vaults normally are. I think I'm getting-- and you can right click on them. And then there's an option to migrate, and you can do that one at a time.

STEPHEN PORATH: Yeah, so if you have a lot of large Vaults, or you have a lot of Vaults, and you want to step through the process, which-- if you're doing this, I definitely don't see why you wouldn't want to. Because you can at least have a good gauge of where you're at throughout the whole upgrade. So stepping through each Vault, and migrating it one at a time, you can see the progress of that Vault. When it's done, you're on to the next one. If you have four relatively similarly sized Vaults, and you've done two, you're about halfway through.

So whereas if you do it automatically, it's very difficult to track that. So if you're managing a timeline, that method is actually a really good way to handle it. Also, on this screen-- I don't know if Matt touched on it-- you have the content center libraries. So we'll get into--

MATT WILLIAMS: I said libraries, but I guess I-- I wanted to include Content Center there.

STEPHEN PORATH: And that's what they, I think, are called in the ADMS console anyhow. So yeah, you want to migrate those here, and I'll touch on that a little bit more on the next slide. And this--

AUDIENCE: That's just migrating the Vault database [INAUDIBLE]?

MATT WILLIAMS: Yeah, the files are-- that's not even in the scope of this class. That's something we do on a separate-- we get the Vault server upgraded first. And then we have someone that goes through and-- you know, this might be a couple weeks later. They go through and get our library files updated to the next rev of Inventor, or AutoCAD, or whatever package you use. That's kind of the next phase in our update process.

STEPHEN PORATH: Yeah, and, if you were just talking about non-Content Center files, but files in general, we do migration on a file. So you shouldn't have any steps to worry about on the file side. It's just all in the data. So on the Content Center, and kind of as Matt had mentioned, possibly two weeks out, whenever, when you're ready to move to the latest version from a client perspective, likely you're going to be dealing with custom Content Centers. So you basically are going to go through a copy process of your old Content Center and create the new version of it, essentially.

The Content Centers are tied to a partition. The partition is the year version of Inventor. So you want to wait until after the clients have been upgraded, if you're doing it as a separate step, because your current Content Center may continue to get updated for three weeks forward to a month forward, however long it takes to get the upgrade done on the client side. So you want to make the copy at the last possible moment before you switch over to the new version of software.

Another note here-- standard Content Center-- you can probably download and apply those immediately. Those are standard. You get those from us. You download it from Autodesk. I would just say Google search it for whatever year version you need. We keep them all listed on a single page, and then you just download the ones that you need.

I would say don't download the ones that you don't need, though, because, a lot of times, they get on these servers, and there will be content centers that nobody even knows why they're there, probably can get rid of them. They just lead to additional confusion in everything. So if you use, say, ISO or whatever, and that's it, use that. Don't bring in all of the additional Content Centers. It just leads to confusion, that's all.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].

STEPHEN PORATH: What's that?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] clients from Europe or Japan--

STEPHEN PORATH: Sure.

AUDIENCE: --or from the US. We've had [INAUDIBLE]. And when you lose those, if you delete them, then you can't reconcile those samples, and you can't save them until you turn around and [INAUDIBLE].

STEPHEN PORATH: Yes.

AUDIENCE: So I would disagree with that statement.

STEPHEN PORATH: No, I wouldn't say get rid of anything.

AUDIENCE: OK.

STEPHEN PORATH: I would only say download what you know people use. So by default, those Content Centers also install on C, which is a horrible place to put a database. But it's just a very quick, easy process. You can manually put them wherever you want. You got to move those. If you've got 10 Content Centers for, let's say, 3 or 4 versions, which people wouldn't even really be able to connect to, you need do some cleanup. Tidy up. That's all. Definitely do not delete something people need, though. I would just say avoid putting it there in the first place, if you can.

So this one is on replication monitoring. So once you have migrated your database, your replication process is what is going to distribute those changes to all of your subscribers if you are in a Workgroup setup. So, Matt, I'll let you kind of talk through that one.

MATT WILLIAMS: Yeah, I can't quite reach it but, for every Vault you have, it should show up in that window.

STEPHEN PORATH: Oh, yeah, I can-- assuming the pointer actually works here.

MATT WILLIAMS: That's all right.

STEPHEN PORATH: I guess the battery died.

MATT WILLIAMS: How long these replication jobs take are going to be dependent on the latency to the site and how large your database is. For sites that we have that are like 30 milliseconds apart, it might take 10, 15, 20 minutes. For some sites we have in different countries, where the latency is around 350 milliseconds, it can take 12 hours. So I like to monitor that with these SQL Server replication monitor tools.

And Vault has kind of the same tool inside it that basically pulls information from SQL, so they should look the same. Sometimes they're not always in sync. But, you can get sort of the same information from either place. I like to use the SQL tools, because you can turn on auto refresh, and they're more in real time.

STEPHEN PORATH: And I will say-- so some of the replication monitoring tools are going to give you error messages that you do want to look at. This one Matt and I had talked about. But I have seen, in several instances, a situation where the error was based on timeout. So an update was taking a long period of time, which is completely expected after an upgrade. It shows as an error, but it's not really an error. It just hasn't checked back in, because it's still doing something.

MATT WILLIAMS: Basically, with that one was from is, whenever you start your migration, SQL's going to generate a new-- and maybe you're not familiar with this, or maybe you are. SQL's going to generate a new snapshot of the database for a merger application. And, while that's happening, there is nothing it can actually check to replicate with, so that's where that error comes from. Once that snapshot gets finished, it's going to pick back up where it left off. And then it says running again, and everything's OK. And, if that doesn't happen, then there's a problem somewhere, and you need to contact your DBA, or Autodesk, or whoever.

STEPHEN PORATH: All right, we'll do some final checks here. Matt already had mentioned IS running on all servers, so you want to check and make sure it started up as it's supposed to. If it hasn't, try to start it. If it won't start, then that's obviously an issue.

Vault client check-- so you want to try to do a check using your Vault client against every single server. Do you have it in the environment? Just do a get with a checkout. Make sure you don't encounter any problems. After that, you're probably good to hand this off to a user or set of users to do some quick acceptance testing and whatnot. So I highly encourage incorporating them as much as possible so you can get ahead of any problems that might exist before the larger user base gets involved.

So and I'll try to run through here fairly quickly, because we've got about seven minutes left. So I'll skip the survey, and we'll just jump into the troubleshooting. So basically, I've encountered a lot of people dealing with Vault on a server level that are not familiar, whether or not they're dealing with an error for IAS or SQL Server. So I just wanted to kind of address some of those with you guys.