[SIMS] Upgrade - when?

[speckytecky]

I hope this doesn't seem a muppet question to some of you

We are this week moving over to SIMS class registration / behavioural management etc. Our SIMS lives on a dedicated server and we have bought in support from CAPITA who want to upgrade SIMS to the latest release today. My bursar just asked me the best way around this - staff will be wanting to carry our their behavioural reporting at the end of the school day so are likely to be wanting to be logged into SIMS. How do you other SIMS users plan in upgrading?

[Michael]

I do MIS upgrades out of hours - otherwise you're forced to run round telling everyone to logout.

[matt40k]

Who's doing the training? If it's Capita - they will most likely want the new version to show off a new version. What did the trainer ask for?

Actual choice depends on how smoothly the upgrades normally go and how busy you are. Personally would be a good time, assuming staff know to plug in early.

[sparkeh]

When you do it depends on your situation.
Here (primary), SIMS is used for electronic reg so I give people plenty of warning that SIMS will be unavailable after PM reg on a certain day. Then I do the upgrade in the afternoon when all the regs have been taken.
However we don't currently use it for behaviour and stuff like that so its impact is fairly limited. If was to be a major inconvenience I would move it to an out of hours job.

[speckytecky]

Thanks for the replies folks - much as I thought.

Just a bit of a clarification toward your response @matt40k - 40K? that'l be your salary then I reckon

It's not training that I was asking about but my newness to having SIMS on a dedicated server with the school at the same time going from 3 or so Admin staff accessing SIMS to the whole Admin and Curriculum staff.

[Boredguy]

We generally update SIMS out of hours, or even better, during the holidays when there is minimal staff onsite and we can turn off the VPN to stop anyone else connecting while we run the update.

If it's an urgent patch, we alert the staff that SIMS will be unavailable between a 30 minute window and then pray nothing goes wrong and it takes longer.

[Rawns]

@matt40k - 40K? that'l be your salary then I reckon

That's his fee for helping you out. Pay quick, he likes to break legs...

We always upgrade schools out of hours. However there is always someone who leaves SIMS .net open which causes the homepage to poll the database every few minutes causing a upgrade failure!!!

[sparkeh]

That's his fee for helping you out. Pay quick, he likes to break legs...

We always upgrade schools out of hours. However there is always someone who leaves SIMS .net open which causes the homepage to poll the database every few minutes causing a upgrade failure!!!

I set the db to local access only before an upgrade and run it from the server.

[vikpaw]

Out of hours, or at least after school hours, with plenty of warning. Sometimes on a weekend.
Kick them all out. Use a script in SQL studio to tell you who is logged in, disconnect their sessions or remote restart their PC.
Remove permissions from the S drive, so they can't access connect.ini - so no new connections.
Worst case put the server into single user mode, but this is dangerous if someone still has a connection as they'll beat you to it. Better to stop tcp/ip connections and make sure you've got console access.
If you've got a virtual setup, rollback is easy, but if you're on standard physical, then worst case, you have to restore your backup. An update shouldn't be that big of a deal, and licensing for the new stuff is just a patch or two.
I'm surprised you need Capita. Or what extra things you need from the latest version.

[Jobos]

How do you kick someone out of sims? Is there a setting somewhere?

[Michael]

How do you kick someone out of sims? Is there a setting somewhere?

From the file server > Control Panel > Admin Tools > Computer Management > Shared Folders. You can close sessions from here.

[vikpaw]

close sessions from there, thought that's mostly just views on the share.
pstools will give you access to remotely kill SIMS, though to be honest if i've warned them, i check who is on and email / call while i'm getting ready for it, or doing any last minute prep / downloads, then just remote reboot any that are left. with no share permissions removed they can't get back in, unless you've got any standalone boxes with a local connect.ini

edit:
it's much easier rebooting the machine with shutdown -i than faffing with getting the pid etc to kill the process.

[matt40k]

@matt40k - 40K? that'l be your salary then I reckon

Getting closer to it, it's my target - still a way off and shh @Rawns - you know I don't like to give people a headstart!!

[Rawns]

Getting closer to it, it's my target - still a way off and shh @Rawns - you know I don't like to give people a headstart!!

OOOOOW! My legs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[matt40k]

OOOOOW! My legs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You had to do it the hard way didn't you, now I've got blood all over your "update your bank details form", let's hope your payroll dept doesn't mind