In preparing the upgrade documentation for 4.0.4 -> 4.2 I presented my upgrade plan and upgrade testing results to my bosses and they raised a question I could not answer: How do you fully test the 4.2 upgrade by mirroring your current setup and then running the upgrade, then test inbound/outbound calling features without disturbing the production system?
My production setup is: 1 main server and one redundant proxy First test system: 1 server running 4.2 in a different address space on the same network with different users and a different domain name. Second test system: 1 server running 4.2 that has been mock upgraded that is on a completely separate network using the same domain name and IP address space as my current production setup. My dilemma is as follows: With this test setup, inbound and outbound calling and features can be tested on the first test system with different users, but this system cannot mirror the production system for a test upgrade due to address space and domain name conflicts. A full mock upgrade can be done on the second test system since there is no address space or domain name conflict, but there is no way to test with currently implemented gateways as those networks are unreachable. sipXecs, as far as I know when restored from backup, cannot have a different IP address from the original system or things break. Even if you could change the IP address the problem lies in the fact that your gateways (in my case, audiocodes) will still be pointing to the original DNS SRV, thus will never be able to call the mock upgraded system to test calling without breaking the production system. Here is an alternate plan that was cooked up that I need to verify will work: I thought about changing my DNS SRV a few hours in advance so all phones rely on the redundant proxy, then after all phones have registered to the redundant proxy pull the plug on the main server and put the mock mirror upgraded server in it's place, then using DNS views have one subnet that the SRV record priorities point to the main mock upgraded system so I can test a few phones on the upgraded system while the rest of the phones will continue to stay on the redundant proxy running 4.0.4. The only hangup with doing things this way is I'm concerned that the two systems (the main and the redundant proxy), having two different versions (4.0.4 on the redundant proxy and 4.2 on the main mock upgrade server) will cause things to go haywire and break due to constant communication between the main and redundant servers. The testing shouldn't need to last any longer than about 1/2 an hour. Has anyone ever tested running different versions on the main and redundant proxies, even for a few minutes? Will this cause and irreversible meltdown? Will nothing happen at all? Thanks for your input and suggestions. -- Josh Patten Assistant Network Administrator Brazos County IT Dept. (979) 361-4676 _______________________________________________ sipx-users mailing list sipx-users@list.sipfoundry.org List Archive: http://list.sipfoundry.org/archive/sipx-users Unsubscribe: http://list.sipfoundry.org/mailman/listinfo/sipx-users sipXecs IP PBX -- http://www.sipfoundry.org/
