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We are looking to upgrade from v6.1 (using encryped SMATDB) to v22.09 and I am wondering if anyone can help me figure out a few things. We have always employed services for our upgrades in the past, but I thought I would give this one a try. I remember them validating data through the new server to make sure all of our routes and scripts work as expected, but that was all on regular SMAT files so the process was a little easier. We switched the system to use encrypted SMATDB after the go live.
We have installed v22.09 on a new test server due to OS requirements (Redhat 8). Our 6.1 install is running on Redhat 6 which is no longer supported. I have copied over our sites from the current test server to the new test server and ran the HCIROOTCOPY command to bring them all into v22.09 successfully.
Now I am wondering how I can validate PROD data through the TEST sites to make sure all the routes and scripts work correctly? Since the SMATDB files are encrypted, I can’t just copy them over since the site names are different. Do I need to create my new PROD server and migrate a copy of the PROD sites so the encryption matches, or will I need to dump out Inbound Data to text files so they can be sent through the TEST site? How can I start the Outbound Connections to save the processed messages without conflicting with connections from the current test server? Is there a good comparison tool to use?
My thought was to start with the TEST environment so we can migrate that first and get experience on the process and an estimate on how long it will take when we migrate PROD. We just don’t have a lot of TEST messages to use so I was hoping to validate with PROD data.
If anyone has any tips for the upgrade process or issues to look out for I would greatly appreciate them. I am probably making this harder than I need to but I want to minimize the surprises.
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I believe you can make use of hcismatdb options for resending messages from smatdb. The 6.1 version I believe only used lowercase site name for the pw. I beleive this has an option for a different password. I generally set a raw route from current environment to new environment and let it build similar smatdb’s on both. For those interfaces that have multiple sources, I will separate out by source so as to give me a good comparison in order of the source….and in the same order on the output. Otherwise, different delays can change the output order of the messages.
May have to look through the forum for hcismatdb.
I use pspad for my compares. Sometimes ultraedit++, or other edit tools with compare capabilities.
I usually save a copy of my NetConfig and then run a script that chnages all of my output threads to file /dev/null with no reply wait or saveOB message. Of course I skip any type of jump threads and only change those going to external hosts.
In my last upgrade from 6.X to 19.1.1.0, the one thing I came across is that copying fields that might contain an ampersand, 6.X would parse and only copy that prior to the &.
6.X
copy Vitamin A & D would result in Vitamin A
and in 19.1
Would result in Vitamin A & D….
I took it as a fix and confirmed with downstreams. Some wanted it escaped….\T\
Hope this helps some….
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What we typically do is grab a few hours’ worth(or whatever timeframe needed to get a good sampling of messages) of production messages from the various inbound SMAT DB’s and resend them to files. We then run those files through Routes in the Testing Tool(so you don’t actually have to connect to downstream systems) in both the upgraded and non-upgraded versions. Then it’s a simple diff to ensure that the resulting files are either identical, or have explainable differences. This worked quite well for us in our upgrade from 6.2 to 20.1 last October.
HTH,
TIM
Tim Pancost
Trinity Health -
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Thank you for the ideas! I am actually using a combination of them by using HCISMATDB to write out a good sampling of Inbound Data to a file, and then running it through both Test environments and using WinMerge to compare the output. This way I don’t need to change or turn on the Outbound Threads and I still get a full comparison of every route involved.
I ran a sample this morning for ADT’s and it works exactly as expected. Now I just have to get started…
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