Upgrade path from Vault4 on Win2003 to Vault5 on Win2008r2

[Elvar]

I have one Windows2003 R2 server unning Vault4.1.
I want to upgrade Vault to 5.0 and I want to install a new Windows 2008 R2 instance for Vault to run on. There is no change in the database setup.

What is the best way to go about doing this safely?

[Beth]

When you say you're installing a new Windows 2008 R2 instance, do you mean on another machine or do you mean on your current machine?

If it's another machine, then uninstall Vault from the current server, choose the option to keep the database, and install Vault on the new server. When the window for connecting to the SQL server comes up, you will want to give the location of the databases. After that, agree to reuse the same database.

For help installing, refer to our Install Guide.

[Elvar]

Yes it would be a different machine.

So the path for this upgrade would be to
1. Upgrade Vault from 4.1 to 5.0 on the old server
2. Uninstall Vault 5.0 from the old server
3. Install a fresh copy of Windows2008 R2 on another machine
4. Install Vault 5.0 server on Windows2008 R2 and point the database connection to the same server as the old setup has.

Can I skip step 1 and step 2 and just go to step 3 and connect Vault 5.0 to a working database? or do I have to uninstall everything from the old server?

[Beth]

You can jump right to the install. The only thing to be careful of is if later someone decides to uninstall the first one and lets it drop the database. The first one won't be able to update the database any more, so it won't be needed.

If you decide to uninstall the first one after the move, then you need to tell it to keep the database, or just cancel the database connect part when uninstalling. It will offer to uninstall just the server then.

[Elvar]

Good to know.

Is it possible to run both vault servers on the same database?

[Beth]

It's not possible to run both at once. Once the server is installed on Win 2008r2, it will take over the database from the first Vault install. The only think the first install can do after that is completely delete the database, which you don't want.