Failed SOLUS2 Workstation upgrade after a SOLUS3 deployment?

As advised by Capita at a SOLUS3 training day, we are rolling out SOLUS3 to schools in order to install Discover. We've done this in 14 schools now, and last night we released the SIMS Autumn upgrade to three trial schools via SOLUS2 which we are still using for SIMS and FMS upgrades. One of these schools has had SOLUS3 installed and Discover deployed successfully. In this school, the Summer upgrade installed successfully on all but three workstations and the SIMS server (which failed to upgraded the SIMS client to the Autumn release when it was ran). Strangely, the server and these three devices are machines that all have the SOLUS3 Agent installed, and have had Discover deployed to them. We've compared the SIMS.INI, S: drive mappings etc to workstations that have upgraded successfully and there is no difference between them, but for some reason, SIMSLoad.exe does not pick up and apply the SIMS upgrades! These machines upgraded with no issues when the Summer upgrade was released, and it's too much of a coincidence to be only SOLUS3 machines that are not automatically upgrading any more when they have been fine previously before SOLUS3 was present on them. Has anyone else come across this or have any idea of what's going on?

We're planning on rolling out the Autumn upgrade to al of our sites on Monday, and this has made us a bit cautious about releasing it to the otherschols that have SOLUS3 installed. :(

check the .ini files locally, simsload compares the version to the server copy. I think it's simsload.ini or simsapplicationsetup.exe version number, which may be stored in the .ini
I can look it up, but not got access at the moment.

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Originally Posted by vikpaw

check the .ini files locally, simsload compares the version to the server copy. I think it's simsload.ini or simsapplicationsetup.exe version number, which may be stored in the .ini
I can look it up, but not got access at the moment.

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Thanks @vikpaw - I did check those and the versions in the Setups folder were newer than the version numbers in the SIMSLoad.ini file. In the SIMS.INI, the SIMSSetupsDirectory path is also correct so the upgraded files should have applied but SIMSLoad just seems to ignore them on these 4 devices.

That's correct. If the SOLUS3 agent is installed, SIMSLOAD won't update. You must use SOLUS3.

Well that's a totally stupid design flaw! So you decided you want to install SOLUS3 in a school but it's a case of all or nothing?! So nice of Capita to mention this when they do training! They actually suggested that it's a good idea to roll out SOLUS3 purely for managing Discover so you can get to grips with it before you manage SIMS upgrades with it in the future. No where was it mentioned that as soon as an agent is installed on the PC, you have no hope of using SOLUS2 to get your upgrades applied via SIMSLoad!

Why on earth can't both be used during the transition period from S2 to S3?!

Deploy via S2, then deploy same release via S3.

Guess we're gonna' have to in this case! Unfortunately, we only added the workstations to the SOLUS3 "Discover Client" group and not the "SIMS Workstation" group. So now we're going to have to take even more time going onto each server and adding the devices to the UI before we can get the SIMS upgrade installed via SOLUS3! I thought SOLUS3 was meant to make upgrades more pain free. Right now I feel like Capita have buffed my face with sandpaper!!! :mad:

No, it won't make our lives easier, it'll make our replacement lives easier as we'd rolled it out and worked out all the bugs :p

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Originally Posted by matt40k

No, it won't make our lives easier, it'll make our replacement lives easier as we'd rolled it out and worked out all the bugs :p

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When you say 'we', i thank thee, but am glad i'm not included in that group. ;)

If you stop the SOLUS3 Agent Service the upgrades will then go through :)

ROFL!!! So are you recommending manually stopping all the task each time - ie more work? Or disabling the service - why did you bother with S3 again?

Just ask as it takes 10 secs to authorise it in SOLUS3.

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Originally Posted by matt40k

ROFL!!! So are you recommending manually stopping all the task each time - ie more work? Or disabling the service - why did you bother with S3 again?

Just ask as it takes 10 secs to authorise it in SOLUS3.

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Just trying to share our own findings, I don't work for Capita.

Ah k, neither am I, sorry if it came across harsh, just got another mess to unpick when I saw you post - I think I need to buy some super glue :)

The issue with this for us is that the Autumn upgrade runs through the whole upgrade process including upgrading the database. According to the deployment log file, it locks the SIMS database into single user mode while it checks the DB & realises that the database does not actually need upgrading. A few minutes later, it puts it back into multi-user mode. As this upgrade can't be scheduled using the new schedule feature in SOLUS3, we have to roll it out when we're in which will cause issues if people are actually using SIMS as they will get disconnected from the database. :(

Code:

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2011-12-13 15:22:29.2519|sql4450|Info|Tgt 10, Pkg 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000, TasksetRunner|Running task, 'Set database to single user mode', in Backup mode.|UpdateDsLog()

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Originally Posted by Matt40k

why did you bother with S3 again?

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Because Capita said it can be used purely for rolling out Discover along side SOLUS2 which can be continued to use for maintaining SIMS and FMS which is obviously not the case. Our current upgrade mechanism for upgrades and patches (a combination of SOLUS2 and CentraStage) has resulted in a 95% success rate for both SIMS and FMS upgrades across 271 sites. It just works and requires barely any interaction from us. Plus the school don';t have to worry about doing anything themselves (which a lot of them love!). Now we're dabbling with SOLUS3, it's causing more work then necessary because of misinformation with Capita. No devices have been specified in the SIMS Workstation target, only the Discover target definitions. Therefore we have to add all these additional devices to the relevant groups, get the upgrade authorised from our UI and get it rolled out. Getting users to stop the service (which we've done in some schools) and then load SIMS or getting them to run SIMSApplicationSetup.exe manually to upgrade is a simpler solution while we:

1. Wait for Capita to come back with why SOLUS3 has to block SIMSLoad.exe
2. Rethink our SOLUS3 roll-out plan if SIMSLoad.exe can't/wont be aloud to run. If this is the case, future rollouts of SOLUS3 will need to involve a complete migration from SOLUS2 to SOLUS3 in schools meaning even more work of getting workstation info and making sure all workstations are added to the correct groups.

And running SOLUS2 and SOLUS3 t the same time in 271 sites is not a nice prospect, not with SOLUS3 in it's current state anyway...

[/RANT]

Bit narked by those Prof boys at Capita who seem to be waiting for us to final all the bugs. Still shocked that Capita didn't tell you about SIMSLOAD. We dragged it up early on in the field trial when it came up on a newly installed SOLUS3 that it was missing the SIMSSetupsDirectory path and I was a bit like? Umm? We next had a issue with access rights, the old version of SIMSLOAD will drag up a nasty error message if S3 agent was installed, but you didn't have admin rights. So they're been at least two changes to SIMSLOAD since SOLUS3.

Personally, SIMSLOAD needs to die and it needs to die soon. Getting users to upgrade is stupid.

If I had CentraStage setup, I wouldn't even look at SOLUS3, I would just package everything in CentraStage - and I do mean everything. Unfortunately, I don't and no-one wants to spend the money, so we use the free tool. We've got 50 schools on SOLUS3 and it's a mix, just a question of working through the bugs but once it works. It works great. Currently, I getting "proxy" issues with the connection being dropped which is stopping my deployments - so I'm going to take a large hammer to whoever introduced this feature...