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How to migrate from Dashboard Server SCOM Edition v4 to v5

Documentation Team
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How to migrate from Dashboard Server SCOM Edition v4 to v5

This article describes how to migrate from Dashboard Server SCOM Edition v4 to v5. We recommend you read through this article before starting the migration, to familiarise yourself with the migration process and the changes between versions.

If you have an earlier version of Dashboard Server SCOM Edition already installed, then the installer will upgrade your installation:

 

Why migrate to Dashboard Server v5?

New features in v5

For the full list of improvements and bugs addressed see What's New in Dashboard Server SCOM Edition and Release Notes for Dashboard Server SCOM Edition.

 

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 Dashboard Server v5 side-by-side

4. Recreate Named User lists

5. Recreate Web API providers

6. Configure Dashboard Server v5

7. Decommission v4

 

You will need to reenter your Dashboard Server license key as part of the upgrade. Following the upgrade you will also need to recreate your Web API providers and recreate your Named User list.

1. Before Upgrading

There are a few key tasks you should complete before upgrading:

  • While you can upgrade to v5 from any version of v4.x we recommend you have the latest version of Dashboard Server v4 installed. Download the latest v4 version here.

  • Make a note of your license key, as you will need to enter this as during the 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 Dashboard Server > 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).

    ClosedSupported browsers

    Dashboard Server works best with the latest versions of Edge, Chrome, Firefox and Safari on desktop & mobile.

    On Dashboard Server v5 Internet Explorer is not supported. Older browsers may show a blank page.

    On Dashboard Server 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 Dashboard Server v4 - it is good practice to ensure you have a working backup before upgrading (How to backup and restore Dashboard Server SCOM Edition).

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 Dashboard Server v3 jump to I'm running Dashboard Server 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 and v5 side-by-side in production for 3 months. This is to enable you to complete the migration and configure v5 before going live and switching your production use to v5. After 3 months your v4 instance will no longer be supported; if you have any concerns please contact SquaredUp Support.

Make a note of your license key, as you will need to enter this as during the v5 installation.

3. Download and install Dashboard Server v5 side-by-side

The installer will default to a side-by-side upgrade if it detects a Dashboard Server for SCOM v4 instance. This migrates your dashboards to a new v5 instance, but leaves your v4 instance as it is.

If you prefer, you can change to:

  • In-place upgrade - This upgrades your v4 instance to a v5 instance. It is not possible to revert or rollback to v4.
  • New installation at the Deployment Type screen. This will install a separate v5 instance which does not use any dashboards from your v4 instance.

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 Dashboard Server SCOM Edition.

  1. Download the latest version of Dashboard Server

  2. Run the installer .exe that you have downloaded.

  3. Click Next
  4. Accept the License Agreement and click Install.
  5. Click Next to move on to check the deployment type.

  6. The installer will default to a side-by-side installation if it detects a SCOM Edition v4 instance:

  7. 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.

  8. Click Next to move on to check the deployment location.

    The new Dashboard Server v5 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 of v5 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 Dashboard Server SCOM Edition).

  9. 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 without your existing settings, you can change the deployment type to New Installation to deploy v5 without migrating any settings.

  10. On the last installer screen tick Open Dashboard Server in a web browser to run Dashboard Server. 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).
  11. Activation screen - enter your license key and click Activate.
  12. Data Warehouse - this is probably already configured from v4, click Next.
  13. Open Access - this may already be configured from v4, click Next.
  14. Enterprise Application Monitoring - this is may already be configured from v4, click Next.
  15. Open Access - all Open Access dashboards will be regenerated in the new format for v5. 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 Dashboard Server > system > open access.

    For each Open Access dashboard you will see the message 'Preparing your Open Access dashboard, please wait'.
  16. 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:

4. Recreate Named User lists

The list of licensed and blocked Named Users is not migrated across to v5 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 Dashboard Server > system > named users.

5. Recreate Web API providers

You will need to manually re-create all Web API and Azure providers in v5 with exactly the same name they had in v4.

Dashboard Server uses secure encryption to store any credentials and connection details for Web API providers. Dashboard Server 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 Dashboard Server.

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 Dashboard Server v5

Dashboard Server administrators

Decide which users should be able to administer Dashboard Server and make them SCOM admins (How do SCOM roles affect what users can do in Dashboard Server?).

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 Dashboard Server v4. You may choose to do this now, or following user training. How you do this depends on how you were originally serving Dashboard Server 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 Dashboard Server 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 Dashboard Server SCOM Edition. 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 Dashboard Server v4 to v5, jump to Redirect traffic from v4.

 

FAQ

I've upgraded Dashboard Server, but some of the built-in dashboards are duplicated?

The v5 upgrade process preserves any dashboards that you have customized - any modified dashboards will be cloned and recreated in v5.

When v5 is installed we re-import the community packs bundled with the product (such as Windows Server, IIS and SQL). If you have customized one of those dashboards yourself you will now have two versions - the native v5 version and your customized v4 copy. It is up to you to choose which version you want to keep (or amalgamate the two).

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 Dashboard Server v5 to use the same share.

Please note that the new Dashboard Server 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 and to set it to use the v4 domain service account that account's password must be retrieved, which the installer is unable to do.

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 Dashboard Server v3, how do I upgrade to v4?

If you have Dashboard Server v3 you should upgrade to v4 first, then upgrade v4 to v5. This is because there are significant changes between v3 and v4 which are migrated as part of the v3 to v4 upgrade process.

Dashboard Server v3 will reach end-of-life on 31st March 2021. To benefit from the many new features in v4 and v5 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 Dashboard Server SCOM Edition v3 to v4.

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 Dashboard Server 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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