For many Documentum customers, deciding how to upgrade a Documentum system often boils down to whether or not to upgrade in-place with a clone or just leave the environment alone and upgrade it in-place on the existing hardware. This year, I worked with a client on a project to explore the differences between upgrading several Documentum systems in place versus migrating the documents straight to a new 6.5 installation. Many of the in-place upgrade complexities were due to the older database and OS.
- Oracle needed to go from 9i to 10.2.03 as well as be converted to UTF-8
- The Unix OS needed a significant upgrade, including the rack supporting the virtual partitions
- The Documentum Content Server required several upgrade steps. It needed to go from 5.2.5 (some 5.2) to 5.2.5 SP5, then 5.3 SP6, and finally to 6.5. I then did a separate upgrade to 6.5 SP2.
There were several project goals that could only be achieved with a migration strategy.
- Combine Repositories on Windows installation and move to a single UNIX installation
- Reorganize object model by flattening object hierarchy
- Undo custom folder configurations created many years ago
The technical complexities of upgrading in-place from 5.2.5, and the need to merge Documentum repositories, led the client to pick a migration approach for the upgrade
Based on TSG’s upgrade experience with this client and others, we created an upgrade planning guide.
The planning guide is available here.
Please let me know your thoughts below.
Hi
Thanks for the information.
I am little bit confused with the Migration and Upgradation may i know the exact difference between these
Thanks
Jazz
Hi Jazz. When we’re talking about a Documentum upgrade, we mean when you want to move to a newer version. For example, currently a lot of Documentum customers are upgrading from 5.3 SPx to D6.5 SP2. A migration means moving (or migrating) objects from one environment to another.
An upgrade can involve a migration, but doesn’t necessarily need to. If you’re upgrading with a migration, you would need to set up a separate environment with the new software on it, and then move the objects from the old environment to the new. An upgrade without a migration is called an “in place” upgrade. In an in place upgrade, you update the software on the old servers to the new version. There are pros and cons to both approaches. The post above goes over how we analyzed a client’s environment to decide whether to use a migration or in place strategy for the upgrade.
Also, a migration doesn’t necessarily need to be tied to an upgrade. For example, there may be needs to migrate documents from one Documentum repository to another, or from a server file system to Documentum, or the other way around.
If you’re interested in using an automated tool for migrations, check out our OpenMigrate offering:
https://www.tsgrp.com/Open_Source/OpenMigrate/open-migrate.jsp
Hope this helps!
I want to use Repository miration approach to migrate my up and running D5.3 application/repository to another up and running D6.5 content Server.
What approach should I follow.
Can I create a new repository on D6.5 environment and then copy my D5.3 repository content on the setup and go for an upgrade.(Provided It allows me to do that)
Or how can I make my existing D5.3 repository contents compatible to D6.5 setup without upgrading my existing D5.3 environment.
Kindly suggest.
Hi ROX.
Your first approach can be modified some to be a clone and upgrade approach. With a clone approach, you would create an identical copy of your 5.3 repository and content server on new hardware. You then walk the clone through the in-place upgrade steps to reach 6.5. At that point you can turn-off the 5.3 repository and just use the 6.5 repository.
One thing to note is that you need to do the switch during an outage period or you could end up with users adding content to the 5.3 repository after you’ve made the clone. If that happens you’ll end up missing that content in the 6.5 upgrade.
Your other question of how to make the existing 5.3 repository contents compatible with 6.5 is interesting. Outside of an upgrade path or explicitly copying/migrating content from 5.3 to 6.5 I do not know of a way to upgrade from 5.3 to 6.5. You can copy/migrate data from a 5.3 repository to a 6.5 repository through the Documentum API. If you are interested, our TSG OpenMigrate product does this, https://www.tsgrp.com/Open_Source/OpenMigrate/open-migrate.jsp
I hope this helps!
Christine