Want ability to restore from failed upgrade.

[Jason Dixon]

On Feb 23, 2005, at 4:55 PM, Peter Smith wrote:

> Jason Dixon wrote:
>
>> Stop right there.  Yes, you should have backups.  But don't rely on 
>> those solely as your backup in case of upgrade failure.  Your focus 
>> should be on building a test system and performing the upgrade there.
>
> Yes, well that's great if you have spare matching hardware.  What 
> about the rest of us?
>
>>   Document and test everything.  Then proceed with your production 
>> system upgrade, referring to your documentation and, in the worst 
>> case scenario, restoring from the backups.
>>
> I doubt there is any point in testing a server setup on a 200MHz P3 
> desktop, is there?

Please read my comments more carefully.  I'm not suggesting everyone 
has identical hardware for this purpose.  This is a TEST system, not a 
FAILOVER/REPLACEMENT production system.  It does not need identical 
hardware;  it only needs a minimum of hardware capable of running the 
applications being tested.  Based on the OP's description, I imagine a 
used PC in the Pentium-II range would be more than capable.

Oh, and yes, a 200Mhz PC would suffice for his purposes.  As far as I 
can tell, we're not talking about stress-testing the applications.  He 
simply wants to ensure that his data and applications will transition 
from older to newer versions.  Yes, stress-testing is very important, 
but is beyond the scope of this thread.  If he can't afford a spare set 
of identical hardware, it's going to be impossible to stress-test 
properly anyways.

--
Jason Dixon
DixonGroup Consulting
http://www.dixongroup.net