Migration of Windchill 10.2 M010 to 11

[dbaddorf]

Hello!

We would like some help with our plans to upgrade our Windchill 10.2 M010 to 11.  This is our first upgrade so we'd truly be thankful for any insight that anyone can provide to us.

Our existing Windchill 10.2 M010 server is running Windows 2012 w/ SQL 2012 (as a VM on Hyper-V).

Our goals include:

1. Create pilot server so that we can test out Windchill 11 before going live.
2. The pilot server ideally would be running Windows 2012 R2 or Windows 2016.
3. The pilot server would be running SQL 2014 or SQL 2016 (whatever version which has bundled licensing with Windchill).
4. The pilot server would use the existing Windchill license (re-licensed for a new MAC) while the existing Windchill 10.2 server uses the original license.  The goal is to have a temporary server to test the Windchill 11 server not a permanent testing platform.
5. At the point that the testing has been completed the pilot server would be refreshed with the current data from the Windchill 10.2 production server and it would become the new production server.  The old Windchill 10.2 server would then be decommissioned.

We can think of two basic options to achieve these goals:

1. Build a new VM (with Windows 2012 R2 or Windows 2016), install Windchill, and use the Windchill Rehost Utility (Rehost) to build the pilot server.  We'd need to license the server, test, and migrate the current production data for the go-live to make this pilot server the production Windchill server.
2. Clone the existing Windchill 10.2 VM, use the Windchill Rehost Utility (Rename), upgrade Windows, upgrade Windchill, test, and migrate the current production data for the go-live.

As I mentioned this is our first upgrade and we don't know which option is easier/better.  As newbies we would greatly appreciate any help that anyone would offer.

Thanks so much!  Dave

[BrianToussaint]

Hello Dave,

I just completed testing the upgrade from Windchill 10.2 to 11.  I'll try to answer your questions as I can.

The pilot server ideally would be running Windows 2012 R2 or Windows 2016. - You need to check the Windchill Software Matrices document for compatability.  I do not believe that Windows 2016 is compatable yet..

The pilot server would be running SQL 2014 or SQL 2016 (whatever version which has bundled licensing with Windchill). - Neither SQL nor Oracle comes bundled with Windchill.  If you have a VAR, they might have sold you the SQL license for your current setup.  Since we are migrating from SQL 2008, we had to go with SQL 2014 but have plans to go to SQL 2016 after testing.  Both are compatable with the latest version of Windchill 11.

The pilot server would use the existing Windchill license (re-licensed for a new MAC) while the existing Windchill 10.2 server uses the original license.  The goal is to have a temporary server to test the Windchill 11 server not a permanent testing platform. - This is not how Windchill licensing works from a perpetual named user.  I do not know about subscription.  And I know that Navigate licenses are different.

At the point that the testing has been completed the pilot server would be refreshed with the current data from the Windchill 10.2 production server and it would become the new production server.  The old Windchill 10.2 server would then be decommissioned. - That is fine.  I tested with my new production server.  It takes a little more than a refresh.  Make sure to copy your clean install of Windchill somewhere before you start testing.  You will have to go back to it.

As far as the procedure that you will use, you will not use clone or rehost.  You will use the Upgrade Manager.  You will copy items from your source (10.2) to your target (11.0).  Make sure to copy your filevaults to.  You do not want to connect your test system to your production file vaults.  You also need to download and use the Upgrade Reference guide and the Upgrade Guide for the date code of Windchill you are upgrading to.  Along the way make sure you document with screenshots all that you are doing for the upgrade so that you can just do it step by step for the final upgrade to production.  I've got 30 pages of instructions for when I do my final upgrade at the end of the month for production.  I'll warn you that the guides are okay but not the best at telling you what you really need to do.  I've had to use Tech Support a bit for translating the guides and was even told once that the step wasn't necessary.  Some tricky parts are if you are tied to a corporate LDAP to login and the new Solr indexing setup.

Hope that this helps you some.

[MGSSCP178]

Hello Brian,

I am one of the engineers that Dave is helping out on this upgrade project. Just to be clear, we are using Windchill PDM Essentials 10.2 at this time and want to upgrade to 11. From reading the 'PDM Essentials Getting Started Guide 11.0 M030' they state:

"Microsoft SQL Server 2014 is bundled with Windchill PDM Essentials and is automatically installed and configured. This bundled SQL server version is licensed with, and can be used only with Windchill PDM Essentials."

I can't speak to how that will affect our upgrade methods, but I wanted to point out where Dave's assumption was coming from.

Thank you for your help!

[TomU]

PDM Essentials does, Windchill PDMLink does not.  You will need to purchase either Oracle or MS SQL server if you intend to move to "full blown" Windchill.

[TomU]

Actually, you will probably need to stay with Microsoft since you have existing data in SQL Server already.  There is no migration tool (offered by PTC) to go from SQL Server to Oracle.

[dbaddorf]

Tom, thanks for the help with the SQL question.  Yes, we want to stay with SQL and since we have the PDM Essentials we will be moving from the existing SQL 2012 (with our version 10) to SQL 2014 (with version 11).  Does having PDM Essentials change any of the basic questions that I originally stated about the options to create a test Windchill server (either cloning the existing server, renaming it, then upgrading Windchill vs. building a new server and rehosting Windchill)?  Thanks for your help!

[TomU]

Either method will work but I prefer scenario #1.  This way I always have a nice clean server installation to start from.

One comment on SQL server licensing.  There is no license for SQL server bundled with Windchill.  You are responsible for licensing this on your own.  SQL Server Developer Edition is free, so you may be able to use that during the testing phase.

Keep in mind that Windchill does not yet support Windows Server 2016.  SQL Server 2016 is supported (unless you need Cognos), but Windows Server 2016 is not.  If it was me, I would probably run Windows Server 2016 for the SQL Server (assuming they are separate VMs) and then run Windows 2012R2 for the Windchill Server.  (At least for now...)  There is no need to actually install any PTC software on the SQL server.  The database can be easily created manually.  (See the knowledge base.)

[TomU]

I see Brian and I were both responding at the same time.  To Brian's point, if you don't need a test system functioning before the upgrade, then there is no need for the rehost utility.  I prefer to have a test system mirrror production before attempting an upgrade, hence my agreement with your rehosting approach.

As far as licensing, Windchill is licensed by named user.  (There is no mac address licensing like Creo.)  The user "assigned" to a license is allowed to access any Windchill system in your organization, so separate licensing is not required for test or dev systems.

[BrianToussaint]

Unless I missunderstood his rehosting questions, it seemed like he wasn't rehosting to get a test environment for using as his source system but was using it to rehost from 10.2 to his new 11.0 in scenerio 1 or copy the VM and then do the upgrade to 11.0 instead of starting with a clean 11.0 and doing the upgrade that way.  I guess I've had a test 10.2 since I went live with it that I didn't have to rehost but just refresh my 10.2 test system for testing this upgrade.  I just ran through a dry run of the upgrade with the data straight from my production server to make sure my instructions were complete.  Techinically the "Upgrade" doesn't actually touch the production server with the right choices, especially in the file vault area.

[dbaddorf]

Brian & Tom,

   Thank you both so much!  This certainly gives me some good information to start with (Windchill licensing, SQL Licensing, Windows 2016, etc.).  However I would like to clarify that I'd like to create a test system with Windchill 11 while my production Windchill 10 is still running.  Then once the Windchill 11 is thoroughly tested then we'd like to make it the production server (hence the need to either refresh the test Windchill 11 or run through the entire process again).  Does this make sense?  Does this alter either of your suggestions about how to proceed?  I realize that the "easiest" option is to do an in-place upgrade but this doesn't provide us with a test Windchill 11 server - that needs to be part of the plan.

   Option 1: . Build a new VM (with Windows 2012 R2), install Windchill, and use the Windchill Rehost Utility (Rehost) to build the pilot server. Once tested we could either refresh the data or go through the process of building another VM (and go through the Rehost process again).

   Option 2: Clone the existing Windchill 10.2 VM, use the Windchill Rehost Utility (Rename), upgrade to Windows 2012 R2, upgrade Windchill to Windchill 11, and test.  Then we could either migrate the current production data for the go-live or go through the cloning process again.

   We are looking for the easiest option which gives us our main goal: a Windchill 11 system to test with a copy of the production data before going live.

   Any further responses would be greatly appreciated.  Any many thanks for what you've already provided.

Dave

[BrianToussaint]

Dave,

The short answer is that you use Rehost to go from 10.2 to 10.2. You use UpgradeManager to go from 10.2 to 11.0.  So unless you are creating a seperate virtual to clone your 10.2 system, you will not use rehost.  Since you are using a virtual, make a backup of the virtual after you have 11 installed so that you can go back to it after you test.  Or if during testing something messes up, you have a clean place to go back to.  I'm not on a virtual so I made copies of the clean Windchill install.

Brian

[dbaddorf]

Brian,

   Just for some clarification (to you and anyone else reading these posts):

   We had two ideas on how to build a test Windchill 11 system using a copy of our existing Windchill 10 data:

1. Rename:  
   1. Clone existing Windchill 10 VM.
   2. Rename utility:  This allows us to have both our production Windchill 10 and a test Windchill 10 system at the same time.
   3. Upgrade test Windchill 10 system.
   4. Test Windchill 11.
2. Rehost:
   1. Build new Windchill 11 VM.
   2. Rehost utility:  Copies data from production Windchill 10 system to test Windchill 11 system.
   3. Test Windchill 11.

   Then for either option we'd need to plan to go live on Windchill 11:

1. Either run throught the entire process that we used to create Windchill 11 (either Rename or Rehost)
2. Or refresh data from production Windchill 10 to Windchill 11.

   I hope that this helps clarify how we were thinking about using the Rename and Rehost utilities.

   Thanks again for your help!

Dave