How to migrate from SquaredUp DS for SCOM v4 (side-by-side)
SquaredUp DS for SCOM v4 will come to its end-of-life on 26th September 2024 and will no longer be supported.
See Support for older versions of SquaredUp DS
This article describes how to migrate from SquaredUp DS for SCOM v4 to v5
If you have an earlier version of SquaredUp DS for SCOM already installed, then the installer will upgrade your installation:
Upgrading to v6 defaults to an in-place upgrade, see How to upgrade SquaredUp DS for SCOM (in-place). (You can change to a side-by-side upgrade during installation).
- Upgrading to v5 defaults to a side-by-side upgrade. Upgrading from v4 to v5
or v6 using a side-by-side install is covered by this article. - Upgrading from v3 to v4 see How to migrate from SquaredUp DS for SCOM v3 to v4 (side-by-side).
Download the latest version of SquaredUp DS v4
Why migrate to SquaredUp DS v5 or v6 ?
New features in v6
Auditing, see Auditing
SolarWinds integration, see How to use the SolarWinds tile
Prometheus integration, see How to use the Prometheus tile
Column Graph visualization
New features in v5
- Dashboard designer - new dashboard layout designer (How to use the dashboard designer (v5))
- Open Access - now with simplified interactivity (Sharing Dashboards with anyone - Open Access)
- Web API - easier configuration and more visualizations (How to use the Web API tile)
For the full list of improvements and bugs addressed see What's New in SquaredUp DS for SCOM and Release Notes for SquaredUp DS for SCOM.
Planning the upgrade
Summary of the upgrade process
1. Before Upgrading - complete the upgrade prerequisites
2. Licensing - have your license key ready
3. Download and install SquaredUp DS v5 or v6 side-by-side
6. Configure SquaredUp DS v5/v6
You will need to reenter your SquaredUp DS license key as part of the upgrade.
1. Before Upgrading
There are a few key tasks you should complete before upgrading:
While you can upgrade to v5
or indeed straight to v6 from any version of v4.x, we recommend you have the latest version of SquaredUp DS v4 installed.Make a note of your license key, as you will need to enter this as during a v5 installation.
Make a note of your licensed and blocked Named Users before upgrading, so you can recreate the lists following the upgrade. You can see the list from the top right-hand menu ☰ in SquaredUp DS > system > named users.
Ensure the server's default browser is not set to Internet Explorer, which is no longer supported (to check your default browser, search Windows > default apps).
Supported browsers
SquaredUp DS works best with the latest versions of Edge, Chrome, Firefox and Safari on desktop & mobile.
Internet Explorer is not supported on SquaredUp DS v5 and above. Older browsers may show a blank page.
On SquaredUp DS v4 Internet Explorer 9 and earlier versions are not supported.
Check the SquaredUp server spec before upgrading (System Requirements, Server Spec and Sizing).
Publish any draft dashboards and perspectives you want to keep. Ask other users with authoring rights do the same, because draft dashboards and perspectives are not migrated to the upgraded instance.
Ensure no changes are made to your v4 instance. You might like to advise other administrators not to make any changes to v4, in particular dashboards, perspectives, profiles, Web API providers, dashboard packs, publishing Open Access dashboards, or modifying Named Users.
Consider user acceptance testing prior to upgrading, and user training after upgrading.
Backup SquaredUp DS v4 - it is good practice to ensure you have a working backup before upgrading (How to backup and restore SquaredUp DS for SCOM).
If you are using high availability jump to What do I need to consider when upgrading a high availability (HA) configuration?
If you currently have SquaredUp DS v3 jump to I'm running SquaredUp DS v3, how do I upgrade to v4?
2. Licensing
You may want to perform upgrade testing and user acceptance testing in your test/dev environment. For this please request a 30 day evaluation license from Sales.
You are licensed to run v4 side-by-side with v5
Make a note of your license key, as you will need to enter this as during the v5 installation.
3. Download and install SquaredUp DS v5 or v6 side-by-side
The v5 installer will default to a side-by-side upgrade if it detects a SquaredUp DS for SCOM v4 instance. The v6 installer defaults to an in-place upgrade.
Editing the deployment type - side-by-side, in-place or new installation
Click edit on the Deployment Type screen if you wish to change the install:
- Side-by-side - This migrates your dashboards to a new instance of the new version, but leaves your old instance as it is.
- In-place - This upgrades your old instance to the version you are installing. It is not possible to revert or rollback to your old version.
- New installation - This will install a separate instance of the new version which does not use any dashboards from your old instance. See How to install SquaredUp DS for SCOM
This article will you lead you through the side-by-side upgrade option.
Carry out a side-by-side upgrade
For the full step-by-step guide see How to install SquaredUp DS for SCOM.
- Download the latest version of SquaredUp DS
Run the installer .exe that you have downloaded.
- Click Next
- Accept the License Agreement and click Install.
- Click Next to move on to check the deployment type.
The installer will default to an in-place upgrade, so to carry out a side-by-side install you should change this to side-by-side at this point. (The v5 installer defaults to a side-by-side installation if it detects a previous version).
You can click edit and change the install type:
Editing the deployment type - side-by-side, in-place or new installation
Click edit on the Deployment Type screen if you wish to change the install:
- Side-by-side - This migrates your dashboards to a new instance of the new version, but leaves your old instance as it is.
- In-place - This upgrades your old instance to the version you are installing. It is not possible to revert or rollback to your old version.
- New installation - This will install a separate instance of the new version which does not use any dashboards from your old instance. See How to install SquaredUp DS for SCOM
Check that your v4 instance has been selected as the instance to be upgraded.
If necessary click the edit button to change the deployment type to side-by-side upgrade (Recommended), then click edit to select your v4 instance from a list of installed instances, and finally click ok twice to return to the deployment type screen.
Editing the deployment type - side-by-side, in-place or new installation
Click edit on the Deployment Type screen if you wish to change the install:
- Side-by-side - This migrates your dashboards to a new instance of the new version, but leaves your old instance as it is.
- In-place - This upgrades your old instance to the version you are installing. It is not possible to revert or rollback to your old version.
- New installation - This will install a separate instance of the new version which does not use any dashboards from your old instance. See How to install SquaredUp DS for SCOM
Click Next to move on to check the deployment location.
The new SquaredUp DS application pool identity will be set to Network Service by default (How to check and modify the application pool identity). This is because a new application pool is created for a side-by-side install and the installer cannot read the password for any domain service accounts that the v4 app pool may be using. It can be changed to a domain service account after selecting the deployment type during the install, and the password input manually. The application pool identity is important if you are using the SQL tiles or Windows authentication with Kerberos (see How to configure access to a database for use with the SQL tile and User authentication methods for SquaredUp DS for SCOM).
Complete the installer.
If you have any queries or issues with the installer contact SquaredUp Support with a copy of the log file (accessible by clicking view log). If in the meantime you wish to evaluate v5 or v6 without your existing settings, you can change the deployment type to
New Installation
to deploy v5 or v6 without migrating any settings.- On the last installer screen tick Open SquaredUp DS in a web browser to run SquaredUp DS. You will be taken through the setup wizard.
If the browser appears blank when browsing to SquaredUp, ensure the server's default browser is not set to Internet Explorer, which is no longer supported (see System Requirements, Server Spec and Sizing) (search Windows > default apps). - Activation screen - enter your license key and click Activate.
- Data Warehouse - this is probably already configured from v4, click Next.
- Open Access - this may already be configured from v4, click Next.
- Enterprise Application Monitoring - this is may already be configured from v4, click Next.
- Open Access - all Open Access dashboards will be regenerated in the new format. Clicking Upgrade will regenerate all your Open Access dashboards now. If you have a lot of Open Access dashboards this could take a few minutes, so you may wish to click Skip Upgrade and regenerate the Open Access dashboards later from the top right-hand menu ☰ in SquaredUp DS > system > open access.
For each Open Access dashboard you will see the message 'Preparing your Open Access dashboard, please wait'. - Dashboard Packs - if there are new dashboard packs, click Download, if there are upgrades to the default Dashboard Packs, click Upgrade.
4. Update or redirect Open Access URLs
All Open Access dashboards and perspectives will have been given new URLs in v5
You must now either update all systems that are embedding Open Access dashboards or perspectives with the new URL (such as wall dashboards, Sharepoint, or other monitoring tools) or put some kind of redirect in place to automatically redirect traffic on the old URL to the v4 version. The Upgrade Report (part of the installation) will provide a list of the invalidated Open Access URLs and their updated value.
This can be achieved in a number of ways:
- IIS Rewrite rule (see How to configure a redirect using the IIS URL Rewrite module)
- Load Balancer
- HTTP Proxy forwarding rule
4. Recreate Named User lists
The list of licensed and blocked Named Users is not migrated across to v5 or v6 during a side-by-side upgrade. You can recreate your lists of licensed and blocked users using the notes you made before the upgrade, or you can use the Automatic license allocation option, which is enabled by default, to allocate a license to new users when they log in.
See the top right-hand menu ☰ in SquaredUp DS > system > named users.
5. Recreate Web API providers
You will need to manually re-create all Web API and Azure providers in v5 or v6 with exactly the same name they had in v4.
SquaredUp DS uses secure encryption to store any credentials and connection details for Web API providers. SquaredUp DS relies on IIS to generate and store encryption keys. It is not possible for an IIS application to decrypt settings from another IIS application, unless you specifically generated and securely stored your own key prior to creating providers in SquaredUp DS.
When migrating dashboards, Web API and Azure tiles bind to and use the providers name. This means that if you recreate your providers with the same names, all tiles will continue to work.
Provider names are case-sensitive, so servicenow
and ServiceNow
are not equivalent.
If your providers make use of OAuth 2 or Azure connections, you will need to locate or regenerate the client secret as we do not expose the value of that field in either version of SquaredUp.
For more information see How to add a Web API provider.
6. Configure SquaredUp DS v5/v6
SquaredUp DS administrators
Decide which users should be able to administer SquaredUp DS and make them
Redirect traffic from v4
Following a side-by-side upgrade, you may wish to re-use the URL that users were previously using to access SquaredUp DS v4. You may choose to do this now, or following user training. How you do this depends on how you were originally serving SquaredUp DS to users:
- DNS A/CName record change
- IIS Rewrite rule
- Load Balancer
- HTTP Proxy forwarding rule
7. Decommission v4
Backup
Before decommissioning and disabling your v4 instance, we recommend taking a backup of the SquaredUp DS files so that you can refer back to them should any issues come up in the future (most likely a user realising they had an unpublished draft they want to retrieve). See How to backup and restore SquaredUp DS for SCOM. You can then use the JSON files as a reference for recreating that content in v5
Licensing
Once your migration has been completed and v5 is running in production, you have 3 months of support on your existing v4 instance before v5 is your only supported and licensed platform. This should give you enough grace period to migrate any users who did not move across immediately, and give you a fallback should any unanticipated issues arise during initial adoption. If you have any concerns please contact SquaredUp Support.
Redirect users from v4 to v5
If you haven't already done so you should redirect traffic from SquaredUp DS v4 to v5
FAQ
I've upgraded SquaredUp DS, but some of the built-in dashboards are duplicated?
The v5
When v5
What do I need to consider when upgrading a high availability (HA) configuration?
We recommend a side-by-side upgrade as described in Enabling High Availability.
The installer will recognize that HA is configured and automatically configure SquaredUp DS v5 to use the same share.
Please note that the new SquaredUp DS v5 application pool identity will be set to Network Service by default, but can be changed to a domain service account during the install, and the password can be entered manually (How to check and modify the application pool identity). This is because a new application pool is created for v5
When upgrading a HA secondary server, EAM features are not available for the first 15 minutes.
For more information see Enabling High Availability.
I'm running SquaredUp DS v3, how do I upgrade to v4?
If you have SquaredUp DS v3 you should upgrade to v4 first, then upgrade v4 to v5
SquaredUp DS v3 will reach end-of-life on 31st March 2021. To benefit from the many new features in new version please get in contact with SquaredUp Support so we can discuss your options and undertake a migration strategy that best suits your needs.
See How to migrate from SquaredUp DS for SCOM v3 to v4 (side-by-side).
How does upgrading effect the authentication I'm using?
Side-by-side and in-place upgrades will use the authentication method configured for the instance you are upgrading, either forms or Windows authentication. If SquaredUp DS is not installed on a SCOM server, and you are using Windows authentication with a domain service account it is particularly important that you reconfigure the domain service account and enter the password during the upgrade. Otherwise, the installer will set the application pool to Network Service (as mentioned above) and you will be unable to login because the Kerberos SPNs will be configured for the domain service account.
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