E9.2 JDE 9.2 Platform Upgrade Challenges

[Paddy]

Hello Everyone,

My organization is planning to upgrade our current version of JDE to the latest version and wanted some inputs related to below. Our infrastructure platform is on iSeries/DB2. We are wondering if me need to switch platforms and what would be the challenges people face during this transition. What factors do we need to take into consideration when deciding which platforms we need for our organization. Any advise , documentation will really help us in making this decision.

1. What are the challenges faced when migrating the database from DB2 to MSSQL
2. Reliability of MS platform vs iSeries (DB & Enterprise server OS)
3. Clustering of the enterprise server
4. Challenges faced if any with clustering
5. Should be go with Clustering or take load balancer route
6. Points to consider when deciding the platform

Thanks

 

[markdcci]

Paddy,
I'm sure you will find a plethora of opinions on this subject, but before even answering your questions 1 through 6 I can answer your previous question: Do you need to switch platforms to upgrade? The answer is no - you don't have to switch platforms: IBM i / DB2 is definitely supported at least through Release 23 (aka Update 7 with TR 9.2.7) and will likely be supported for the foreseeable future.

That being said you may have a business driver(s) to switch. For example, one of the deciding factors for choosing a platform is how much in-house expertise you already have. Sounds like you probably have IBM i experience, but you might also have SQL/Windows experience as well.

 

[Paddy]

Paddy,
I'm sure you will find a plethora of opinions on this subject, but before even answering your questions 1 through 6 I can answer your previous question: Do you need to switch platforms to upgrade? The answer is no - you don't have to switch platforms: IBM i / DB2 is definitely supported at least through Release 23 (aka Update 7 with TR 9.2.7) and will likely be supported for the foreseeable future.

That being said you may have a business driver(s) to switch. For example, one of the deciding factors for choosing a platform is how much in-house expertise you already have. Sounds like you probably have IBM i experience, but you might also have SQL/Windows experience as well.

Thanks Mark for the your response. Yes we do have iSeries experience but we have more talent in Windows space. Also the cost will be a deciding factor, but I am not sure if cost will really matter knowing on a Windows platform we will require Clustering of Enterprise server v/s Single server architecture in iSeries.

 

[MFreitag]

That's some very big questions that sound like weeks of planning and discussions
But to comment on most of them:

- What are the challenges faced when migrating the database from DB2 to MSSQL​

There's some pretty good tools out there to do that. Microsoft for example has their own SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) with guides on their websites, which is pretty straightforward. Keep in mind that coming from DB2 to MSSQL will change the types and lengths of some columns, so be sure to check on that and always have Oracle's installation documentation close at hand for MSSQL specifics.

- Reliability of MS platform vs iSeries (DB & Enterprise server OS)​

I don't think anybody will really want to answer that for you there's pros and cons for both, obviously. In my personal opinion and experience the iSeries with IBM i on it is solid as a rock and will probably run longer than any of us including our (future) grandchildren is doing this job while Windows suffers from all the side effects of being the most popular OS out there, BUT is waaay easier to manage and you will find more people being able to do so. So everything comes at a cost and i will never say one is better than the other...don't quote me on that.

- Clustering of the enterprise server​

Oracle does not recommend doing that and will point you to their reference architecture guide. You will find the occassional presentation or whitepaper on it, but it doesn't look like too many companies are actually doing that (or are very secretive about it). I'm not saying it's not possible, but if you see side effects, support will probably not help you. Esepcially with newer Tools Releases though it get's a lot better to just run multiple enterprise servers (Virtual Batch Queues e.g.)

- Challenges faced if any with clustering​

For enterprise server: see above. For database: As of today, some/most of your kernels will probably crash if you failover to another node on an MSSQL database. There is the kernel reconnect functionality for Oracle DB, but not for MSSQL (yet! - according to Oracle). There's a BUG or SR on this, so if anybody reading this is interested in kernel reconnect for MSSQL, comment on it and raise demand, please!

- Points to consider when deciding the platform​

I think you pointed out some important topics (for you) already: Expertise in your own company, cost ... I've seen some customers who've been on iSeries for years, decades even and they sometimes have a hard time even considering leaving that platform as they've built EVERYTHING on or for that machine like interfaces connecting to E1, data sources for a BI, scripts exporting data, scheduling (!) etc.pp. so getting all of those connected systems and business critical processes off of the iSeries is a lot more work than the actual migration to a different platform.

 

[Paddy]

That's some very big questions that sound like weeks of planning and discussions
But to comment on most of them:

- What are the challenges faced when migrating the database from DB2 to MSSQL​

There's some pretty good tools out there to do that. Microsoft for example has their own SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA) with guides on their websites, which is pretty straightforward. Keep in mind that coming from DB2 to MSSQL will change the types and lengths of some columns, so be sure to check on that and always have Oracle's installation documentation close at hand for MSSQL specifics.

- Reliability of MS platform vs iSeries (DB & Enterprise server OS)​

I don't think anybody will really want to answer that for you there's pros and cons for both, obviously. In my personal opinion and experience the iSeries with IBM i on it is solid as a rock and will probably run longer than any of us including our (future) grandchildren is doing this job while Windows suffers from all the side effects of being the most popular OS out there, BUT is waaay easier to manage and you will find more people being able to do so. So everything comes at a cost and i will never say one is better than the other...don't quote me on that.

- Clustering of the enterprise server​

Oracle does not recommend doing that and will point you to their reference architecture guide. You will find the occassional presentation or whitepaper on it, but it doesn't look like too many companies are actually doing that (or are very secretive about it). I'm not saying it's not possible, but if you see side effects, support will probably not help you. Esepcially with newer Tools Releases though it get's a lot better to just run multiple enterprise servers (Virtual Batch Queues e.g.)

- Challenges faced if any with clustering​

For enterprise server: see above. For database: As of today, some/most of your kernels will probably crash if you failover to another node on an MSSQL database. There is the kernel reconnect functionality for Oracle DB, but not for MSSQL (yet! - according to Oracle). There's a BUG or SR on this, so if anybody reading this is interested in kernel reconnect for MSSQL, comment on it and raise demand, please!

- Points to consider when deciding the platform​

I think you pointed out some important topics (for you) already: Expertise in your own company, cost ... I've seen some customers who've been on iSeries for years, decades even and they sometimes have a hard time even considering leaving that platform as they've built EVERYTHING on or for that machine like interfaces connecting to E1, data sources for a BI, scripts exporting data, scheduling (!) etc.pp. so getting all of those connected systems and business critical processes off of the iSeries is a lot more work than the actual migration to a different platform.

Thanks for your insights MFreitag. So just to clarify If we move Enterprise server to Windows then Oracle don't recommend Clustering, am I reading it right?

 

[Larry_Jones]

So what component(s) require clustering from your viewpoint?
Are you looking for 100% uptime? What are you trying to achieve with the clustering? There are multiple vendors that can help you configure very scalable configurations.

Just wondering if this is an old Windows OS prejudice. When we first went to OneWorld/E1 we chose a Unix platform because we didn't trust reliability / uptime of the Windows OS at that time (1999). I think that decision was justified at the time but as the Windows server hardware and OS matured we later switched to that platform and in 16(?) years I think we only had 1 major issue (hardware/SAN) related that caused any downtime. And we didn't need to cluster either. We did tend to oversize our hardware configurations significantly though to accommodate business growth between hardware upgrades (~ a 4 year cycle).

 

[Paddy]

So what component(s) require clustering from your viewpoint?
Are you looking for 100% uptime? What are you trying to achieve with the clustering? There are multiple vendors that can help you configure very scalable configurations.

Just wondering if this is an old Windows OS prejudice. When we first went to OneWorld/E1 we chose a Unix platform because we didn't trust reliability / uptime of the Windows OS at that time (1999). I think that decision was justified at the time but as the Windows server hardware and OS matured we later switched to that platform and in 16(?) years I think we only had 1 major issue (hardware/SAN) related that caused any downtime. And we didn't need to cluster either. We did tend to oversize our hardware configurations significantly though to accommodate business growth between hardware upgrades (~ a 4 year cycle).

Hello Larry_Jones, Yes we are looking for 100% uptime and all this time we had iSeries and now there are talks of us exploring the probability of going on Windows platform. We have our other infra on Windows platform and we tend to get issues with downtime when patches are applied etc. This doesn't happen frequently but when it happens there is at least an hrs downtime so in such scenarios we were thing of having a Active / Passive cluster node for windows server.

 

[MFreitag]

Thanks for your insights MFreitag. So just to clarify If we move Enterprise server to Windows then Oracle don't recommend Clustering, am I reading it right?

I think they don't recommend it in general, BUT it is supported - there's just very sparse information on that topic.
e.g. in the 9.1 Tools documentation:

Administering JD Edwards EnterpriseOne on a Windows Server Cluster

or in the cross-product 9.2 it says it is supported without going into any detail on it:

System Overview Guide

The Enterprise Server is the central hub that receives requests from multiple clients as well as other Enterprise Server Instances. It communicates with the database for transactional processing and can be clustered for failover and hot-swap capabilities.

docs.oracle.com