Upgrade from 8.03.40x to 9.05 - Share Your Experience?

Im sure I will get a little flak for this due to my point of view. This is what I posted in the EUG on a similar topic. Just reposting for those that may not have access to the EUG.


I feel that I am the odd one out here, hehe.



We upgraded to 9.05.602 from Vantage 8.03.405 in December. The process process for upgrading had been practiced and nailed down a few months before the upgrade and we did several trial runs to insure that we had the process documented correctly for our needs.



Due to our testing we knew early on that we would need to re-create all of our customizations. Much of the work was just copy and paste with some of it requiring a little more effort to get back up. Once a customization was completed we exported it to help streamline the upgrade process.



BPM's were a little different and with the pass thru supposedly completed now I am not sure how well its going to work. To get the BPM's working you have 2 solutions. 1. recreate them in your testing and export them. Or 2. you must stop at the 9.04 level and verify them. If you stop and verify them first before continueing on to 9.05 they will not give you any probelms during the upgrade process. At least that was how it worked for us.



As for the accounting side Im going to be heartless here, for those that did their homework they knew before they upgraded that it was a massive change. Our controller went into it fully knowing and understanding that it would be up to him to understand how all of the changes affected the system before we went live. He also had documented all the steps he needed to do after I got the database up and running for the GL to setup correctly.



That all being said our upgrade was relatively painless. Now Im not saying it was perfect. I still have about 20 tickets open with SCRs and I am waiting for the 605 release to have most of them fixed. Yes it is irritating to have issues like this.



Upgrading systems has always required beefier system specs. Having gone through this kind of pain with several companies i worked with in the past its expected. Granted I will admit that the progress side of this has gotten completely out of control. Our environment is virtualized with the app server and the DB on the same server.



Now perhaps I am speaking to the wrong crowd, I understand that several of the posters environments make me look like a drop in the bucket. My observations show that anyone who goes to MSSQL or splits the app server from the DB take a total nosedive in performance regardless of the size of the database. Only those that can throw tons of money at it come out remotely ok. I am not defending Epicor on this one as I feel it is unacceptable for as little as they know about resolving this problem. It is not ok to say "throw more money at it." Progress x64 users see this major pain point when it comes to running conversions, it is absolutely atrocious.



Forgot to show my info

9.05.602

Progess x64

Server 2008 R2 as a VM

App Server and DB on same server

8 Cores

12 GB RAM

Tied to a SAN



24 users

12 MES



Other products used (not all on same server): Sonic, Replication server, EPM, Information Worker, APM, EEPM, Portal, Service Connect, Open 4, AFR


"Zac" Jason Woodward
Network Administrator
Intermountain Electronics, Inc.
O: 877-544-2291
M: 435-820-6515
F: 435-637-9601
www.ie-corp.com

Creating customer confidence through extraordinary service and experienced industry experts.

From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of cubcrafters_it
Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 9:30 AM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] Re: Upgrade from 8.03.40x to 9.05 - Share Your Experience?



We're in the middle of an 8.03.409A to 9.05.latest conversion right now.

One of the bigger (technical) hurdles in my opinion is that there's no direct route from 8.03 directly to 9.05. (Well, that's not entirely true, there's a beta for a direct upgrade that you can ask your CAM about. But it's flakey at best.)

You'll need to go from 8.03 to 9.04 which handles UOM changes and some other important magic, then load 9.05.

We're currently dead in the water on our conversion because of a GL Account issue and waiting on Epicor to provide us with a one-off fix. We haven't gotten to a point to really test any sort of performance because this accounting thing is so critical.

However, like other folks have said, a (potential) speed decrease needs be weighed against the E9 featureset, so if upgrading provides you with something that staying in 8 wouldn't give you, that needs to be considered. I'm hearing murmuring that later versions of 9.05 are getting better in terms of speed, and that Epicor is focusing on speed improvements in recent patches.

--- In vantage@yahoogroups.com<mailto:vantage%40yahoogroups.com>, "Doug Oswald" <dougo@...> wrote:
>
> Hello Yahoo! Group Members,
>
>
>
> I am looking for someone in that has upgraded from 8.03.40x to 9.05.xxx
> that would be willing to conduct a webinar or somehow share their
> experience with the rest us considering this upgrade?
>
>
>
> I cannot get upper management approval to proceed with the upgrade until
> I confirm independently of Epicor that 9.05 will have the same or better
> performance. If it is slower in any way, it could be my last upgrade
> here at Fleetwood.
>
>
>
> For selfish reasons, I am looking specifically for someone that went
> from 8.03.40x to 9.05.xxx. I want to know the details of the process
> and the hardware used. How long did it take? How large is your
> database? Did you have any custom programming? What are the reasons
> you upgraded? Did the reasons you upgraded for really work as expected?
> Is your whole network 1 GB? Etc.?
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
>
>
> Doug
>
>
>
> Doug Oswald
> Manager of Information Systems and Facilities
>
> FLEETWOOD
>
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Hello Yahoo! Group Members,



I am looking for someone in that has upgraded from 8.03.40x to 9.05.xxx
that would be willing to conduct a webinar or somehow share their
experience with the rest us considering this upgrade?



I cannot get upper management approval to proceed with the upgrade until
I confirm independently of Epicor that 9.05 will have the same or better
performance. If it is slower in any way, it could be my last upgrade
here at Fleetwood.



For selfish reasons, I am looking specifically for someone that went
from 8.03.40x to 9.05.xxx. I want to know the details of the process
and the hardware used. How long did it take? How large is your
database? Did you have any custom programming? What are the reasons
you upgraded? Did the reasons you upgraded for really work as expected?
Is your whole network 1 GB? Etc.?



Thanks,



Doug



Doug Oswald
Manager of Information Systems and Facilities

FLEETWOOD






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
The upgrade is worth it, for a number of reasons.
However, like most any software, newer versions of Epicor have larger
hardware requirements than prior versions. On the same hardware, 9.05 will
be slower than 8.03, especially for the clients. It's not a massive
performance hit, but it is noticable.

As performance seems to be something of a deal breaker for you, I'll not
take the time to detail our upgrade procedures.

Good luck.

On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 9:04 AM, Doug Oswald <dougo@...>wrote:

>
>
> Hello Yahoo! Group Members,
>
> I am looking for someone in that has upgraded from 8.03.40x to 9.05.xxx
> that would be willing to conduct a webinar or somehow share their
> experience with the rest us considering this upgrade?
>
> I cannot get upper management approval to proceed with the upgrade until
> I confirm independently of Epicor that 9.05 will have the same or better
> performance. If it is slower in any way, it could be my last upgrade
> here at Fleetwood.
>
> For selfish reasons, I am looking specifically for someone that went
> from 8.03.40x to 9.05.xxx. I want to know the details of the process
> and the hardware used. How long did it take? How large is your
> database? Did you have any custom programming? What are the reasons
> you upgraded? Did the reasons you upgraded for really work as expected?
> Is your whole network 1 GB? Etc.?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Doug
>
> Doug Oswald
> Manager of Information Systems and Facilities
>
> FLEETWOOD
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Doug,



I feal your pain; V8 has caused such displeasure here that we may never
upgrade Vantage because of fear that it will only get slower and more
difficult to use.



I'll be watching the responses to this one since I am in the same boat.



Edward F. Fox, Jr., CPA
Controller
Maxson Automatic Machinery Company
Phone 401-596-0162 . Fax 401-596-1050
<http://www.maxsonautomatic.com> www.maxsonautomatic.com

_____

From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of
Doug Oswald
Sent: Friday, May 06, 2011 9:04 AM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] Upgrade from 8.03.40x to 9.05 - Share Your Experience?





Hello Yahoo! Group Members,

I am looking for someone in that has upgraded from 8.03.40x to 9.05.xxx
that would be willing to conduct a webinar or somehow share their
experience with the rest us considering this upgrade?

I cannot get upper management approval to proceed with the upgrade until
I confirm independently of Epicor that 9.05 will have the same or better
performance. If it is slower in any way, it could be my last upgrade
here at Fleetwood.

For selfish reasons, I am looking specifically for someone that went
from 8.03.40x to 9.05.xxx. I want to know the details of the process
and the hardware used. How long did it take? How large is your
database? Did you have any custom programming? What are the reasons
you upgraded? Did the reasons you upgraded for really work as expected?
Is your whole network 1 GB? Etc.?

Thanks,

Doug

Doug Oswald
Manager of Information Systems and Facilities

FLEETWOOD

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]





__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature
database 6099 (20110506) __________

The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.

http://www.eset.com



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Hey Doug,

We upgraded to move to FIFO costing. I would not do it again. Alot of bugs and hours spent on the phone with Epicor resolving issues. Performance seems the same, however, we did upgrade our server significantly.

If 8x is running fine, I'd leave well enough alone


--- In vantage@yahoogroups.com, "Doug Oswald" <dougo@...> wrote:
>
> Hello Yahoo! Group Members,
>
>
>
> I am looking for someone in that has upgraded from 8.03.40x to 9.05.xxx
> that would be willing to conduct a webinar or somehow share their
> experience with the rest us considering this upgrade?
>
>
>
> I cannot get upper management approval to proceed with the upgrade until
> I confirm independently of Epicor that 9.05 will have the same or better
> performance. If it is slower in any way, it could be my last upgrade
> here at Fleetwood.
>
>
>
> For selfish reasons, I am looking specifically for someone that went
> from 8.03.40x to 9.05.xxx. I want to know the details of the process
> and the hardware used. How long did it take? How large is your
> database? Did you have any custom programming? What are the reasons
> you upgraded? Did the reasons you upgraded for really work as expected?
> Is your whole network 1 GB? Etc.?
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
>
>
> Doug
>
>
>
> Doug Oswald
> Manager of Information Systems and Facilities
>
> FLEETWOOD
>
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
Doug;

In retrospect, I would not have done it.
Many glitches and gotchas during conversions, but those were expected and overcome with Epicor "One-Off" fixes.

Huge problems:
No accounting history came through from Vantage to the TRANGL table and we have been suffering for two and a half months with disasterous accounting issues.

Invenotry WIP/RECON report takes 30+ minutes to run where it took maybe 3 minutes in Vantage. Stock Status report, same.

Dashboards are 3 time slower as well due to query problems with the software, especialy the PO tables. Impacting Sales, Purchasing and Planning. Buyer Workbench, Sales order manager, and Planning Workbench rely on dashboard queries that take up to 30 minutes to generate data. Vantage took mere minutes.

We have all new hardware and are running in a Virtual environment with all the Epicor recommended tweaks and tuning. 32 Bit, as the 64 Bit was determined to be more problematic with no real performance gains that could be seen.

Each Service Pack, they fix a lot of things, which is good but doing the upgrade has crippled our company severely though we tested everything pretty extensively beforehand. Many Many hours of support on many many issues. Have 14 open calls currently.

I would wait. Our CEO, CFO and VP Of operations agree and are very upset that we did the upgrade.

65 Users, Progress 32 Bit, Vantage 8.03.409C --> 9.05.604 Live now and struggling..

Epicor Support has been very responsive, but some things take months to get resolved even with their best help.

George Hicks
PCI


--- In vantage@yahoogroups.com, "Doug Oswald" <dougo@...> wrote:
>
> Hello Yahoo! Group Members,
>
>
>
> I am looking for someone in that has upgraded from 8.03.40x to 9.05.xxx
> that would be willing to conduct a webinar or somehow share their
> experience with the rest us considering this upgrade?
>
>
>
> I cannot get upper management approval to proceed with the upgrade until
> I confirm independently of Epicor that 9.05 will have the same or better
> performance. If it is slower in any way, it could be my last upgrade
> here at Fleetwood.
>
>
>
> For selfish reasons, I am looking specifically for someone that went
> from 8.03.40x to 9.05.xxx. I want to know the details of the process
> and the hardware used. How long did it take? How large is your
> database? Did you have any custom programming? What are the reasons
> you upgraded? Did the reasons you upgraded for really work as expected?
> Is your whole network 1 GB? Etc.?
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
>
>
> Doug
>
>
>
> Doug Oswald
> Manager of Information Systems and Facilities
>
> FLEETWOOD
>
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
> Invenotry WIP/RECON report takes 30+ minutes to run where it took maybe 3 minutes in Vantage. Stock Status report, same.

Same here.

We were beta customers and found a stable point. I can't go back to
management and do that over again.

Mind you, we were a beta site and we expected some bumps but after GA
we expected a little more stability and performance. We're waiting for
the next SP to start testing since we hear they're working on
performance over new features.

Mark W.
Doug,
First you should look at the possible benefits you gain by moving to 905.
You may gain from Mobile, Web Access, SSRS integration, Enterprise help and more, so the decision should not be based solely on performance. That said, if none of the new features in the core or add-ones benefit you, stay where you are!
We performed the conversion 100% with internal resources and yes, it was painful to convert to 904, then 905. We found multiple issues during our testing and converted several times until we got it right.
No accounting issues if you convert your GL transactions into the TranGLC for all years you wish to carry.
Performance in general seems the same – we did not upgrade equipment but did split off a app server dedicated for printing.
Since moving to 905 we applied 2 additional patches and both have been relatively painless.
Performance has improved and is now good on the 905.604 release.
When you do upgrade you may consider using Epicor's resources as it is a lot of work.
I'm not sorry we did it the way we did as we now understand the product as good as many in Epicor and can better support our organization

If you want to learn more, feel free to contact me

Thanks
Motty


--- In vantage@yahoogroups.com, "Doug Oswald" <dougo@...> wrote:
>
> Hello Yahoo! Group Members,
>
>
>
> I am looking for someone in that has upgraded from 8.03.40x to 9.05.xxx
> that would be willing to conduct a webinar or somehow share their
> experience with the rest us considering this upgrade?
>
>
>
> I cannot get upper management approval to proceed with the upgrade until
> I confirm independently of Epicor that 9.05 will have the same or better
> performance. If it is slower in any way, it could be my last upgrade
> here at Fleetwood.
>
>
>
> For selfish reasons, I am looking specifically for someone that went
> from 8.03.40x to 9.05.xxx. I want to know the details of the process
> and the hardware used. How long did it take? How large is your
> database? Did you have any custom programming? What are the reasons
> you upgraded? Did the reasons you upgraded for really work as expected?
> Is your whole network 1 GB? Etc.?
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
>
>
> Doug
>
>
>
> Doug Oswald
> Manager of Information Systems and Facilities
>
> FLEETWOOD
>
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
We're in the middle of an 8.03.409A to 9.05.latest conversion right now.

One of the bigger (technical) hurdles in my opinion is that there's no direct route from 8.03 directly to 9.05. (Well, that's not entirely true, there's a beta for a direct upgrade that you can ask your CAM about. But it's flakey at best.)

You'll need to go from 8.03 to 9.04 which handles UOM changes and some other important magic, then load 9.05.

We're currently dead in the water on our conversion because of a GL Account issue and waiting on Epicor to provide us with a one-off fix. We haven't gotten to a point to really test any sort of performance because this accounting thing is so critical.

However, like other folks have said, a (potential) speed decrease needs be weighed against the E9 featureset, so if upgrading provides you with something that staying in 8 wouldn't give you, that needs to be considered. I'm hearing murmuring that later versions of 9.05 are getting better in terms of speed, and that Epicor is focusing on speed improvements in recent patches.

--- In vantage@yahoogroups.com, "Doug Oswald" <dougo@...> wrote:
>
> Hello Yahoo! Group Members,
>
>
>
> I am looking for someone in that has upgraded from 8.03.40x to 9.05.xxx
> that would be willing to conduct a webinar or somehow share their
> experience with the rest us considering this upgrade?
>
>
>
> I cannot get upper management approval to proceed with the upgrade until
> I confirm independently of Epicor that 9.05 will have the same or better
> performance. If it is slower in any way, it could be my last upgrade
> here at Fleetwood.
>
>
>
> For selfish reasons, I am looking specifically for someone that went
> from 8.03.40x to 9.05.xxx. I want to know the details of the process
> and the hardware used. How long did it take? How large is your
> database? Did you have any custom programming? What are the reasons
> you upgraded? Did the reasons you upgraded for really work as expected?
> Is your whole network 1 GB? Etc.?
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
>
>
> Doug
>
>
>
> Doug Oswald
> Manager of Information Systems and Facilities
>
> FLEETWOOD
>
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>