Ok, update...so it has been the longest 72 hours of my life, catastrophic results. This will teach me to try and "upgrade' while having only "bronze" support (4-5 days response by way of web support only). The upgrade started out well enough. The files extracted from the 500Mb .exe well enough, then it went into automatic install mode. It did not pick up that AdminStudio Enterprise Server was installed or that there was a current catalog already being used...at this point with my boss standing over my shoulder I began to panic.
She noticed and suggested backing out what we have done so far and researching further, easier said than done. I cancelled out of the install wizard and to my dismay it not only stopped the install of v8.5 but also kindly removed the registry settings for v7.5!!!!
No problem, I have a Cristie Bare Metal Restore off the servers OS (C: drive) and my TSM nightly backup of the storage drives. NOT, the CBMR was corrupt and this is where I began to lose it. I have 20 something engineers using the v7.5 client, with no conflict solving/merge modules and no way to run in standalone mode being that there is no AdminStudio server or catalog for them to connect to come Monday morning. I figure I guess I will have to try and go forward with the upgrade to v8.5 and bite the bullet, I have my storage with all the application builds still intact, I have my configurations that I saved off, and worst case I can rebuild from scratch.
Long story short I have the AES v8.5 up now publishing the AES web page and portal (which by the way before you attempt to upgrade get another public IP address ready because the website needs one and the web portal requires one now too, read your documentation). I have to recreate all the user accounts, and redefine roles!!! Fun stuff.