Im planning to migrate an environment that currently has R4.5 clients, R4 mail templates and R5 servers. Im wondering if I can migrate the client in one step, rather than having to migrate it to R6 first. I know it’s not officially tested, therefore not supported, but that doesn’t mean it will not work. Does anybody have experience on that?
Subject: Oh. My…
Ahh. I did a v4.5 → 6.5 a number of years ago (with working OS/2 v4.5 clients!), and I found if you just avoided using POLICIES at all till all clients were upgraded, it might work.
Seriously thought, your in a world of pain. Best thing would be to build completely new servers, environment alongside as a new domain, get it mail routing and replicating between environments, and then slowly move people across. VMWare is your friend here, you dont need more hardware.
Please tell me you have new hardware. 8 year old servers is not a good start.
I know this isnt the answer your looking for - normally Notes is a fantastic product with excellent backward compatibilty.
But we’re talking about a client version thats over 12 years old, and R5 went out of support a number of years ago. Your applications will have to be re-tested and validated in the new environment, and migrating these people all at once will be career suicide.
Please - tell us how it went. But dont underestimate just how much work this will take. Far more than the work required keeping this environment up to date as you went along. (I know its not your fault but this is something to keep feeding back up to those that are responsible and want a quick+easy fix).
But I dont believe it’ll be more work than migrating to Exchange.
The good news is that once the users see the new interfaces, etc. they’ll think they have a new mail system.
Gooooood luck.
—* Bill
Subject: Did 5.1.1 to 8.0.1 the other day without major problems
But this was a 3 client site, only, and I made it very clearly that this might go wrong, that I am just trying to save this folks some budget.
Subject: Go to 6 first
For lots of reasons, I would recommend you upgrade to ND6.5.5 on the clients and servers first.Groups, Policies and design issues would be the start.
Or…
Bring the clients up to 8, then the servers.
To be honest, I have not tested this. im not sure if anyone else would of though.