9.1 to 9.4 or 9.5?

[antherITguy]

I'm looking into upgrading from 9.1 to either 9.4 or 9.5.  I'm seeking input from other on-prem users that have gone through this upgrade.  How straight forward was it?  Any gotchas?

[JustinGrazulis]

Luke, I ran the reports installer that came with 9.1 full installer. This updated the reports database as far as I know. I can hit the SSRS web URL for management and for reports. I can generate the reports there and see such things as admin accounts and device counts. However, when I jump back into our console, I only get 21 different new style reports. I even went ahead and setup dedicated file and report storage, something we didn't have on 9.0.

[antherITguy]

I stepped through a 9.1 to 9.5.0.9 update and it went fairly well. Just note that the 9.4 DB installer had a pre-req that required a restart before continuing. After the reboot the DB installer auto launched and I just continued on without going back and running the Application installer and waiting for it to prompt to do the DB portion.

[ThomasTran]

For the DB upgrade (9.1 to 9.5), could we focus on upgrading the DB first (9.1 > 9.2 > 9.3 > 9.4 >9.5) then run the other installers afterwards (9.1 > 9.5)?

[techiecheng]

Thomas T., unless something has changed. you will upgrade the DB in increment to the desired version. Then run the latest version of installer once to bring the console to the same version as DB.

[LukeDC]

The most important thing you need to be sure of before upgrading your SQL Db is to have all your App Servers stopped. Running the installer before the sql installer will stop all necessary services etc before you go to the Db upgrade. You could also just manually stop everything. Not stopping the services etc is risky and could corrupt data.

[ChrisHuhnChrisH]

I expected to run the DB Updater (9.2.1.0 to 9.3) from the SQL server itself. AirWatch Support mentioned run it from the Console Server.
Any have good or bad experience either way?

[LukeDC]

Doesn't matter really where you run it from, it connects to the database from the installer whether you are local or not. Of course it's going to be faster using localhost instead.

[tfriedm]

I just upgraded our Dev. environment from 9.2.3 to 9.5.0. As noted above, you need to follow the upgrade sequence for the DB builds through 9.3. Then you can jump to 9.5.0. After which, there's a 9.5.9 patch (which I'm planning on applying tomorrow after I complete my 9.5 upgrade tests. I launched all the upgrades (including SQL) from a temp file on our Console server as an Admin. As Luke stated, the database connects from the installer and you should see your database server mapping along with being prompted for the admin account on the SQL server. Just a quick note: The document, Workspace ONE UEM Upgrade Guide - Workspace ONE UEM v9.5: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Workspace-ONE-UEM/9.5/workspace-one-uem-upgrade-guide.pdf?hWord=N4... needs to be updated to reflect v.9.5. It references only 9.4 numerous times. So, just know that you're upgrading to 9.5.

[RichB2u2]

They are changing versions so fast there's no way the documentation is keeping up!
' Search for the installer using the following format: ' 9.4.X Installer'  WRONG! Searching this document for ' 9.4'  reveals 14 locations that need to be updated in the document! It appears they only changed the title and not the content!

[JohnBatshon]

We just upgraded from 9.1.4.0 to 9.5.0.9 with paid professional services to assist with the upgrade since it was our first time. We started on Monday (4 days ago) the upgrade didn't ' Finish'  until yesterday afternoon. Our Admin Console continuously goes down and the person (from our side) keeps rebooting the server & says ' fixed'  and then it tanks again 40 minutes later. I hope to have these issues resolved soon. When the console has been online I do enjoy the somewhat updated features & looks of it. Some of the changes we were looking forward to obtaining from this upgrade was.

Delay iOS Updates (Up to 90 Days)
Create multiple App Assignments for VPP versions of a public application.

Eventually once our servers become stable I will enjoy these new features.

The only advice I can give is make sure the person who is doing the upgrade really knows what they are doing because it is causing so much pain for us right now.

[ThomasCheng]

John,
Thanks for sharing your upgrade experience with us. I'm sweating as I prepare my upgrade from 9.1 to 9.6.
Did support have any idea why the console would go down? Sounds like an AirWatch service stopped abruptly until server was restarted.
Tom                  

[JohnBatshon]

I did not get to listen in on most of the conversations, but the AirWatch Rep said that our load balancers were causing the problem. I do not know if that is or is not true, but hopefully it will get resolved sooner rather than later. From my perspective it sounds to me like the AirWatch services were failing on our Console Servers, but I do not know if they have dug into the issue enough to understand the root cause of it.

Side Note: I do not think 9.6.X is available for On-Premise sites until 9.7.X becomes available to the SaaS clients.

[LukeDC]

9.6 is available for on-prem:  https://my.workspaceone.com/products/Workspace-ONE-UEM/Windows/v9.6.0.0

[LukeDC]

And explain ' Goes down'  if you would?

[JohnBatshon]

LOL so we are already a version behind *** slaps forehead ***.

Regarding our AirWatch Console going down essentially when trying to access the AirWatch Admin Console we are seeing the following error:

“Service Unavailable”
“The service is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.”

Our Server Admin end up having to restart our CN Server(s) to resolve the issue. Sounds like a bandaid fix rather than an actual fix.

@Luke: On a side note I did want to say I have read a number of your forum posts and I do greatly appreciate all your feedback that you provide to our community. You are a wealth of knowledge & valued greatly.

[LukeDC]

Thanks for the compliment. I enjoy helping out! Back to your issue. Do you use SCOM? SCOM can cause the Airwatch IIS pool to crash if not implemented properly.

[LukeDC]

https://support.workspaceone.com/posts/360007959294

[JohnBatshon]

I honestly do not know if we do or don't as I handle the front end of our AirWatch environment, but I did just see an update between our Server Admins and our AirWatch Rep. The feel they may have identified the issue. I will copy & paste it below, but just remove the critical / personal information out of it.

From AirWatch Rep:

We were able to see that we had LB HEALTH monitor failing as the 'Body regular expression' failed to match the server name because on LB we have the value as 'Airwatch' instead of the server name.

We will update the value of 'Body regular expression' to '.*' on all the below monitors and  see if its failing and decide on our next action.
- VMW-HTTPS-aw-cn.Random.com-HEALTH

- V73-P443-POOL-aw-cn.Random.com

- VMW-HTTPS-aw-ds-X.random.com-DIVICESVCS

- V128.145-P443-POOL-aw-ds.random.com

[LukeDC]

I just realized you're on a SaaS server, my advice here would not apply as they should have control on that end.

[tsmithcoc]

Anyone have issues with SEG servers when upgrading from 9.1 to 9.5?