Migration to a new server

[JeanRM]

Our Flexera Manager and App Portal is on a Windows 2012 server. Our organization will upgrade server to Windows 2019. Does it exist another method than reinstalling everything?  Thanks

[erwinlindemann]

Hi,

Doing an in-place upgrade of the Operating System from Windows Server 2012 to Windows Server 2019 is not recommended for any FNMS application server.

On possible migration path would be:

• On your old Windows 2012 FNMS Server, take a backup of all relevant FNMS configuration files and customizations, especially all data in the \ProgramData\Flexera Software folder.
• Shut down the old application server
• Install a fresh Windows 2019 Server, give it the name of the old FNMS application server, put it on the same domain and give it the same IP address. Make sure a valid certificate is installed for HTTPS, too.
• Install the same version of FNMS you have been using on the old FNMS application server. This might be an opportunity for migrating to the latest FNMS release and run database migration scripts before you install the FNMS software, but you can also do this later.
• When installing the FNMS application server, instead of installing new empty SQL Server databases, use the FNMS databases that exist already .
• Once your new application server is up and running, make sure that all customizations are restored from the backup that you took in step #1.

After you confirmed that your new application server is working fine, you can archive or delete the old application server (if this is a VM), or decommission or re-use the old hardware. 

[JeffVoss]

You can do a database migration to an up to date SQL server. 

Build your new 2019 servers and do an install on the servers but point to your migrated database. 

depending on your client health, you may have some issues with your agents reporting to the new servers. that takes an updated .ini file and update the bootstrap server to the new beacons and deleting the old download and upload settings registry keys. 

[FarrukhNaz]

@erwinlindemann we've already did an inplace upgrade of an application/batch server (from Windows server 2012 to 2019) so far I didn't notice any major issue with the application. Can you please highlight some possible issues?

[JeffVoss]

My organization follows a security best practices. With that in mind, all of the issues I came across were a direct result of our standard servers not being the same as out of the box Windows OS. All of our issues revolved around our unique security settings.