A question that constantly tugs at my mind every time we upgrade our domino server (we’ve been upgrading since our original install of 4.6) is weather or not there is a way, or a need to do a fresh clean install. Would it be beneficial, or even possible, to do a fresh clean “from scratch” install of Domino 8.5.1 and somehow move everyone’s mail files and users and groups over to the new server?
I set up an 8.5.1 server from scratch in our test environment and I don’t know if its just me or not but it just “feels” better. Of course there’s only 2 users on that server, heh. But there are a ton of files on the files tab in admin, which I think are remnants of past versions that are not there in the fresh install. I’m sure there are a bunch of settings that no longer apply as well. However, like I said, everything SEEMS to be working fine on our current server.
We recently did a similar clean install on a mail server that had been on the upgrade path since 4.x. and has also hopped around on a couple different boxes.
We were most concerned with all the orphaned files, and previous versions hanging around.
We did not however start over on the databases. Moving to 8.5, We just ran a fresh install and then copied the current server address book, Mail databases, and all of our custom application databases into their proper place. We let the other system databases such as busytime, log, dircat, etc. build from scratch when it fired up. Then we converted the databases to 85 ODS, and a few address book settings tweaks were required due to 8.5 changes (profiles or something, I forget). We also had to rebuild our statistics collecting since I wiped out the stats db.
In short, it was worth it to me. The directory file count is a whole lot smaller, and just knowing everything is clean and current has made me more comfortable. As far as better performance, I can’t really tell a difference.
I follow this procedure almost every time I do an upgrade that’s not just a FP. It’s always worked great for me. You only need your custom databases, server ID and notes.ini settings to be preserved. Sometimes I’ll have a custom template ACL I’ll want to recreate too.
Like said before, this is the main reason to make a clean install:
“We were most concerned with all the orphaned files, and previous versions hanging around”
Depending on how you administer the server, you will have more or less a “dusty” server. Maybe files you dont need anymore, databases, all of that making it harder to administer. Maybe even services running that you dont need.
It would be better to install a very basic server and then review all the configuration to see if you can disable something.
Although I think a OS reinstall will help you even more.