Skip to main content

We are currently beginning the process of migrating all of our applications to new hardware.  Our K2 installation is distributed and will continue to have the same number of physical machines after the migration.  The environment looks something like this:


 



  • K2 installed on 2 servers running NLB. 
  • SharePoint Portal Server on 2 servers running NLB (we store InfoPath form templates and documents here)
  • Web sites/apps on 2 servers running NLB
  • The database(s) are on a separate SQL Server

 


Along with migrating all of these environments to new hardware, we will be upgrading K2 to SP4 and then migrating our SQL 2000 Instance to 2005.  Our main concern is not with the upgrade or SQL 2005 but with the data in the K2/K2log databases and our InfoPath forms.  Although we have followed best practices there are still some concerns and things we know will have to be ‘cleaned up’ in the data.  We would like identify where all these places are in the databases that will possibly need to be updated in order for the migration to be successful.  One example of this would be the _Worklist table in the K2 database.  It stores the URL to our approval page.  It might read something like ‘http://www.ourcompanysite.com/approvalpage.aspx’  This normally might not be an issue but this link is actually going to change so it will need to be updated.  Another issue would be concerning process data field values.  In our InfoPath K2 solutions we have SharePoint server DNS names in the field values.  Again, this would not be an issue but we are creating new DNS names for the new servers because of timing issues with cutting over other applications outside of the K2 space.  We also have concern with updating our InfoPath form templates as well as existing documents that are in process and awaiting approval.  We are looking for a more streamlined/automated process for updating our data connections to point to the new locations of our web services when they get moved.  For pending documents that are sitting in a document library – how do we update these?  My understanding is that a document created by an InfoPath activity in K2 has values like the K2 server DNS name stored in the document itself.  We might have hundreds of pending documents in these libraries and we would need to come up with a solution for modifying these.  To take this one step further, we are also wondering about the XML data fields stored in ntext columns throughout the databases.  If the process XML field has all the namespaces for our web services stored and they refer to the old DNS names is that an issue?  Or will it not matter because it will use the values of the form template and not what is stored in the data?  These are, at a high level, some of our major concerns.  In addition to these questions, we would like to know of other possible areas of concern in the data where we might need to update it via scripts after we restore our database in the new environment. 


 


Any assistance in resolving these concerns, as well as identifying any potential conflicts we have not thought of would be appreciated.  Thanks.


 

You are right - in a complex environment like yours, migration is no trivial task and requires very careful planning.  You've listed a couple of valid concerns and I would highly recommend doing the migration in a test environment first and make sure everything works as expected.  I would also highly recommend involving your local Services office to get some on-site assistance.  It would be impossible to accurately guide you through the migration process on this forum since it largely depends on the complexities within your processes etc.  In your case it *may* also require direct database edits - therefore the need for on-site assistance.


Regards,


Ockert


You might want to upgrade to SP4 first (and hotfixes) and run your processes for a while to iron out any incompatibilities first.

Reply