Managing Critical Applications During The Upgrade Process - NEC Express5800/320Fd-LR User Manual

Managing Critical Applications During the Upgrade Process

The Active Upgrade Console enables to specify how business-critical applications are started and
stopped during the Active Upgrade process.
If your NEC Express5800/ft series system runs business-critical applications, such as Microsoft
Exchange Server or SQL Server, these applications can run on only one side of the system—the
Production Side—when you split the system. They must be stopped on the other side—the Upgrade
Side—to prevent resource conflicts and to allow you to proceed with upgrade tasks. Furthermore,
when you merge the system, the same applications must be stopped on the Production Side and
restarted on the Upgrade Side, so you can test the applications with the newly-upgraded system disk,
and possibly commit the upgrade.
In general, critical applications are launched and exited automatically by the operating system. For
example, your application might be configured to launch as a service in the Services Control
Manager, or as a startup item in the system registry. But these resources control your applications
only when the operating system itself is launched or exited. In most cases, to minimize downtime,
the Active Upgrade Console executes upgrade operations, like split and merge, without restarting
the operating system. Therefore, if you want to launch and exit your applications at the appropriate
times during the upgrade process, you must configure the Active Upgrade Console itself to control
the applications
Active Upgrade Console provides two methods for controlling your critical applications during the
upgrade process. The method you use for each application depends on the type of application you
want to control:
•
Application services
If your application runs as a standard service that already accounts for interdependencies (with
other services) and requires no special handling, you can specify it on the Application
Services page of the Active Upgrade Console during the configuration process. On the
Application Services page, you can select each service you want to manage from the list of
services on your system, and, when you start the upgrade process, the Active Upgrade Console
will automatically start and stop these services at the appropriate times. See "Selecting
Application Services to Control" on page 5-119 for more information.
•
Custom actions
If you have a custom application or integrated applications from several different software
vendors, and you have special executables that start and stop these applications, you can specify
the executables on the Custom Actions page of the Active Upgrade Console during the
configuration process. Using the controls on the Custom Actions page, you can specify when
your executables will run during the upgrade process, and, if you have several executables, you
can specify the order in which they will run. See "Configuring Custom Actions" on page 5-123
for more information.
TIPS:
Software Upgrade Support, page 5-90
Selecting Application Services to Control, page 5-119
Configuring Custom Actions on page 5-123
Installing and Using Utilities 5-95