Portal Upgrade questions

James_Palmer

Hi,
I'm looking at upgrading the portal from 8.1.2.2016 to the latest 8.6.0.2016.
First issues so far, where can I find a standlone installer, as the servers are not connected directly to the internet.
Second what do I need to prep for going between those two versions, are there any gotchas or is it as simple as running setup etc ....
Cheers
James

Brian_Wiest

You have to follow the offline installer directions (its fun being air-gapped)
https://support.cireson.com/KnowledgeBase/View/20#/
Basically using a personal computer or internet enabled workstation. Run the installer and use the browse installer files. I zip them up and transfer the zip into my enterprise. Then copy to zip to your server and unzip then run the "Cireson Setup.exe" And you will be good to go. 
Haven't seen any issues with jumping directly into 8.6, currently have it running on my new 2016 farm. 

Brian_Wiest

You have to follow the offline installer directions (its fun being air-gapped)
https://support.cireson.com/KnowledgeBase/View/20#/
Basically using a personal computer or internet enabled workstation. Run the installer and use the browse installer files. I zip them up and transfer the zip into my enterprise. Then copy to zip to your server and unzip then run the "Cireson Setup.exe" And you will be good to go. 
Haven't seen any issues with jumping directly into 8.6, currently have it running on my new 2016 farm. 

James_Palmer

Thanks Brian,
How long is the portal likely to be down for whilst you upgrade?

Brian_Wiest

Depends on the environment, 
for me the install takes ~5 minutes. 
Then a few minutes to reset the values that the installer strips out. 

James_Palmer

Okay thanks,
Now kind of worried about "a few minutes to reset the values the installer removes" - like what?

Brian_Wiest

Since my webserver is hit so hard, I update the logging to be hourly instead of daily. Otherwise my IIS logs were hitting 100MB
Update the session from 20 to 25 minutes. 
Add back the HTTPS binding with certificate 

Geoff_Ross

You can specify HTTPS and the certificate in the installer to avoid having to reset that each time. This also ensures that the PlatformCahce service has these same settings otherwise you have to update them too which is via a config file.

Brian_Wiest

Wow installed the portal 100 times and never looked at the advanced website settings. Thanks @Geoff_Ross
(I will still need to update the bindings as we run passwordreset from the same farm)

Geoff_Ross

@Brian_Wiest
LOL, It's not been there forever but I would guess at least two major versions! Yes, its a shame you cannot specify the hostname in there.

James_Palmer

Also, do I need to select "install database" I assume not?

Thanks

Brian_Wiest

Always install database unless you are installing a secondary NLB server.