We are looking to upgrade from 10.2.500 to the latest version of Kinetic, but would like to put kinetic on the same physical server. I would like to do some testing first. Is it possible to install kinetic alongside 10.2.500 for testing purposes or does 10.2 get wiped out in the upgrade process? We have spare servers we could do testing on temporarily but still want Kinetic to eventually end up on the physical server 10.2 is currently hosted on. Epicor 10.2, SQL 2017 and SSRS is all housed on this server (we only have 12 users). Anyone have an insight on what a good practice would be for this?
Also, we only have 1 SQL server license so we would need to have the kinetic sql database hosted on the server running 10.2 anyway so the main question is can the actual kinetic server software exist alongside 10.2 temporarily.
Any expertise on this process is much appreciated.
I attempted to do what you are asking but with a 2021 install on the same server as 10.2 and I did not have a good experience - though I do not recall the details. While I have been told by support that it is possible, I ended up building out a separate VM for testing and will do that for any major upgrades in the future. Here is a recent thread on a related topic: Best Practice For Major Release Upgrade? - Kinetic 202X - Epicor User Help Forum (epiusers.help)
I am virtual but would also not put any unknowns on my production system. You can install SQL as a development server as long as you only use it for testing, but it is also not likely to cause harm on the same server as long as you are clear about the database naming for Epicor and SSRS.