AIX

Hello All,

We want to upgrade our 44p Model 270 from AIX 5.2 to 5.3. This is a standalone devlopment server but downtime is something we don't want because we have a short development deadline looming. I have no tape drive to make backups to. I myself am a developer and don't have any particular AIX experience, although I do have a fair amount of current experience with HPUX and Solaris.

My questions are:
Thanks,
Fred

Fred

DON'T!!!!

You can run a preserve install which MIGHT NOT overwrite you required data but it is destructive as far as the O/S is concerned and the only way back is a backup! Have you got another machine available to you to run a mksysb to which although not bootable can be recovered once 5.2 is reinstalled.

The other thing you need to check is if the current versions of your apps will work with AIX 5.3. You may need to update those once you update to 5.3. We do a mksysb to our DVD drive. I have done Maintenance Level updates, but not an upgrade to another version.

Fred,

* afaik it is called a migration, this is a bit different from a tl upgrade, you don't need to do a fresh install, Your setting are kept.
* Oracle 9 will run (maybe relinking is needed, maybe some issues), other applications will depend, you will need to check them.
* cdr might not be big enough, DVD might be. You can create a bootable image on disk and copy it to a system that has a DVD-writer (I never tried this). A bootable backup is always a good idea to have!
* upgrade (migrate) is very simple (if everything goes like it should), I suggest you to have a look at alternate disk migration, this gives you a fallback scenario in case youre install fails (and you don't have a bootable backup).
* In theory you're downtime is limited to the time it takes to reboot the system (plus application modification..)

I really advise you to make sure you have a sound sollution for the bootable backups, it will save you a lot of headaches when the sh*t hits the ...

You might want to consider an "alt disk migration" to minimize downtime and have a quick fallback solution. As a prerequisite you need a mirrored rootvg (check with "lsvg -l rootvg" and compare the "LP" column with the "PP" column - if "PP" is two times "LP" for all filesystems the rootvg is mirrored).

You might start reading this and maybe this. In the first post there is also a link to some detailed procedures and in-depth documentation.

If you have specific questions please ask.

I hope this helps.

bakunin