Upgrading From Mobility Version 4.0/5.0 to 6.70

Technical Note 2167

Last Reviewed 02-Aug-2007
Applies To
Mobility client and server, version 4.0 through 5.01 upgrading to version 6.70
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Summary

The upgrade from Mobility 4.x or 5.x to 6.70 will retain your existing server settings, but there are some changes in the new version that require special consideration before and after the upgrade.

General Upgrade Procedure

In Mobility XE (first introduced with version 6.00) the server consists of two parts—the server itself and the Mobility warehouse. The warehouse is where all of the Mobility settings are stored. In the past, a server's settings were stored in the Windows registry for that server; by having them in a separate component you have the ability to pool multiple servers and configure them from one place. Load balancing and failover are built into the pool without any additional configuration.

When upgrading to Mobility XE you should choose the option to install the Mobility XE System, which will install both the Mobility server and the warehouse on the same machine. Later, if you want to add another server to your pool, you would install just the Mobility server, and then point the new server to the first server's warehouse. This creates a pool of two servers that share settings.

After setting up your pool you can also install a redundant warehouse on the second machine (or any other machine). See tech note 2130 for instructions on configuring a standby Mobility XE Warehouse.

Upgrading Clients

Mobility 4.x and 5.x clients are compatible with the Mobility 6.x server, although they cannot take advantage of load balancing and many of the other features in later versions of Mobility XE. We recommend that you upgrade your server first, then upgrade your clients to the most recent version as time permits.

Upgrading Software and Hardware at the Same Time

If you are upgrading to Mobility XE and also moving to new server hardware you have two options:

• Start from scratch: install Mobility XE on the new machine and configure it as a new server. This is often the easiest option if you are primarily using global settings. If you have configured many individual device or user settings (like static IP addresses), however, you may want to use the second option.

• There is no way to migrate settings from an older server to an XE server on another machine, but you can migrate settings from the older server to another older server on a different machine, then upgrade that machine to Mobility XE. Use this option only if you have so many settings to move to the new machine that it would be a lot of trouble to start from scratch. Follow these steps:

  1. Install Mobility 5.01 on the new machine (if you need to download the software contact technical support).

  2. On the old server, run Nmsclone.exe and point it at the new machine. Nmsclone is a command-line utility included as part of the original server install, in the \Program Files\NetMotion Server\ folder. For example:

     nmsclone 10.1.1.1

     where 10.1.1.1 is the IP address of the new machine.

  3. Upgrade the new 5.01 server to Mobility XE.

Updating License Keys

Pre-Mobility XE license keys are not valid on Mobility XE servers, so after installing the new server you will need to fetch your Mobility XE license key(s). The key is generated based on the server's serial number, so there's no way to get it to you until after you do the upgrade. The Mobility XE server is installed with a default 100-user 30-day key.

Note: This process requires that your Mobility server be able to reach the NetMotion Wireless web server across the Internet. If your server does not have Internet access we can e-mail you a key. After upgrading your server to XE, send your server's serial number (found on the Licensing page in the Mobility server console) to insidesales@nmwco.com.

1. Open the Mobility console and click on the Licensing page.

2. Follow the Upgrade Information link; this will open our web-based license key distribution tool.

3. Enter your e-mail address when prompted.

4. A license key is displayed, a copy of which is e-mailed to you.

5. Copy this string, then click Add on the Licensing page and paste it in. If you have been granted more than one key, add the others as well.

With Mobility XE there are three types of license keys:

• Device licenses: This key determines how many client devices can be registered in your Mobility server pool. In XE, all of the servers in your pool (if you have multiple servers) use the same device license key, so you don't need a separate device license for each server.

• Server licenses: This governs how many servers can join your server pool. Each pool always starts with one default server license.

• Policy license: When a valid policy license is in place the Mobility Policy Management module is available to all the servers and devices in your pool.

Contact insidesales@nmwco.com if you have any questions about your license authorization.

Configuring NAT/External Server Addresses

If your clients connect to a Mobility XE server through a NAT or other external address that is not the real IP address of the server, you are required to enter that address in the server. This is because the server supports load balancing between multiple servers in a pool. A server must know the other servers' external addresses so that it can properly balance the load of clients. By entering the external address for each server you allow each server to push down to the client all of its connection options.

1. After installing Mobility XE, open the Mobility server console and go to the Server Settings page.

2. Select your server name in the left-hand column.

3. Select the setting External Server Addresses and enter any NAT addresses that clients will use to reach that server. (In version 6.01 and earlier, this setting is called Alternate Server Addresses.)

   Important: Do not enter any of the server's real IP addresses (if the address appears in an ipconfig for that server, then it should not be entered here). Also, for each server's setting, enter only the NAT address for that server, not the other servers in your pool (in other words, each server should have its own NAT address configured in its own External Server Addresses setting, and nothing else).

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for the other servers in your pool.

If a client attempts to connect to a server that hasn't had its External Server Addresses configured the client will receive an error; see tech note 2164.

Setting Up User Authentication

If you're doing an upgrade on the same machine the user authentication should already be set up correctly, but there's another option in Mobility XE if you'd rather use it:

• In Mobility 5.01 users who are a member of the local Windows "NetMotion Users" group are allowed to connect.

• In Mobility XE the above is still true, but there's a server setting called Authentication—NTLM Global Domain Group that can be applied to a group that contains users who are allowed to connect. This lets you configure authentication for all of the servers in the pool from one place, instead of having to configure each server's local NetMotion Users group. If you're using local users defined on the Mobility XE server (not using domain users), you'll still need to use the local NetMotion Users group.

In addition, local administrators are no longer implicitly allowed to connect in Mobility XE—you must add permissions for them to connect as you would for any other user.

Device Licensing

Prior to Mobility XE licensing was enforced based on the number of concurrent client connections, even though the actual paper license stipulated that it was based on the number of devices on which the client software was installed. In contrast, the Mobility XE server allows any number of registered devices to connect at one time, limiting the number of clients that are allowed to register on the server to the number of licenses available.

For example, if you had a 100-device license prior to Mobility XE, you could have the client installed on more than 100 devices, as long as only 100 of them connected at one time. With Mobility XE only 100 unique devices can connect to the server unless you delete some devices from the Mobility console.

Cleaning Up Duplicate Devices After Reimaging a Client

Whenever a client machine is reimaged or the Mobility client is reinstalled, the client will get a new, unique Mobility ID called a PID and appear (to the Mobility server) to be a new client. You may already be familiar with this from the older version of Mobility if you assign static IP addresses or other unique settings to individual clients: when you reimage the device you've had to remove the old instance of the device from the server and configure the new device with the unique settings. This behavior hasn't changed in Mobility XE, and there are some new considerations:

• Old instances of devices that have been reimaged will each use up once license, due to the above change in license enforcement. In Mobility XE you will want to be more diligent in cleaning up the old devices. How to do this is described in tech note 2153.

• The pre-Mobility XE setting Remove Inactive Devices was used to automatically delete devices from the server that had not connected within a certain amount of time (the default was 30 days). This setting no longer exists in Mobility XE.

Unlicensed Devices

This section is particularly important if you currently have more than 100 device licenses.

After you upgrade your server and retrieve your new license key you may have some devices in an "unlicensed" state. You'll need to reactivate them: go to the Licensing page, and if you see an option to "license unlicensed devices", click on it, select all of the devices, then license them.

This is due to the change in device licensing described above. When you first upgrade the server it will have a 100-user license key and so will activate the 100 clients that have most recently connected. The other clients will be stored in this "unlicensed" state rather than deleted so that their settings are retained. Once you have enough licenses you can reactivate them as described above.

If you still don't have enough device licenses to reactivate all of your unlicensed devices you have two options:

• Contact NetMotion Wireless about obtaining additional license keys, or

• Remove some of your active devices—you may have some duplicate device entries as described above.

Related Information

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