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Environment
- Qlik Sense Enterprise on Windows
Transcript
Hi everyone my name is Mario Petre. I'm a senior technical support engineer with Qlik support I work out of the Lund office and been
with the company for the last five plus years i hope to share with you some tips and tricks on migrating your
Qlik Sense site to a new environment today all right the agenda for today will be reviewing the backup and restore procedures as well
Agenda
as thinking about some planning and transferring files ahead how to manage your certificates how to transfer them correctly from site to
site depending on which server you are planning to migrate we'll discuss any pitfalls during this
process and some tips and tricks and some steps for automating now Mario
my understanding is basically when everything goes right it's just backup and restore that's pretty much how things
should go when everything's smooth where can we find all those specific steps though well you're absolutely right troy
we have a step-by-step detailed guide on backing up and restoring a site as well
as transferring the content over to a new site on our online help page okay so i see we're here on the help.Qlik.com
under Qlik Sense for administrators and we've got the most recent version September 2020. yeah this page contains step-by-step
procedures on how to backup your certificates what other considerations in terms of data transfer you need to pay attention
to such as moving your app content and all the procedures necessary to restoring that site these instructions can be used
either for the purpose of migration like we'll be doing today or as a periodic backup procedure yes backups
are wonderful because things don't always work as they're supposed to real quick what is the scope of what we're talking about
today we'll be walking you through the process of migrating the central node of a fairly simple environment we have a
central node we have a service cluster and we also have a rim node added to the environment we'll be doing
this in virtual machines in this particular process it's a vm to vm transfer the same process would apply if you're moving for example from
virtual to physical or vice versa or actually migrating into a cloud provider and why would somebody
want to migrate in the first place there's a few things that can drive that decision environment scaling i i would say is the
primary one okay why don't we take a look at the environment we're going to be migrating from
what i have here shared with you is the central node of the current environment let's go ahead and take a quick look at the QMC and what version of
Qlik Senses is this is our latest version Qlik Sense September 2020. we are running on windows server 2016 on all machines
as you can see this machine has gone through a number of migrations and different versions of the monitoring apps but we
also have some sample applications here there is a data connection currently to a postgresql server we also have a rim node available
a few custom security rules to give access to a stream and this is how the hub currently looks like
so we'll be shooting for like for like transfer of content and metadata on a new server called send server 2 while the old central node
will be quote unquote decommissioned it will no longer be available okay Mario so how should one
get started before you actually run through the process there's quite a bit of planning that i like to do before tackling one of these operations
first of all i want to know exactly what's in the current environment and where things are set up and the QMC can tell you pretty much everything you
need to know about that windows itself can tell you everything you need to know about the accounts and uh
the security for these we'll get started on the online help that's where i start as well especially for the backing up and then
restoring the database we don't expect you to remember this by hard i highly recommend that you familiarize yourself with the steps
involved and make sure that you have a simple checklist in place for both the original server as well as the destination
just to make sure that you run through these steps in a in an organized fashion so i have some questions Mario we're going to be migrating and correct me
from around all of our apps all of our tasks all of our rules that
are set up in the QMC will the domain be the same between the two environments in this particular instance yes in the
case of the same domain the process ends up being a lot simpler your users will remain intact however if the domain changes there are
some considerations for example if your user ids will remain intact on the new domain let's say you have the exact same user
john doe exists with the exact same john.doe user id in the new domain but only that the main part changes there are ways that we can approach this
you can contact professional services for example they can help you with the query for your back-end system to
update all of these records in bulk and re-sync the accounts to the to the new domain if they already exist in active directory
it should be as simple as rerunning your user directory sync task once you have modified it with a new domain controller address
so that it remaps these users in the background is that sync task automatic the user directory syntax should exist
if you are switching domains my recommendation will be to set up a brand new user directory sync task and configure it with the new
domain will the account running the services change that will remain the same however if you need to change it
we need to make sure that the new service account has full control file permissions on the service cluster the account has permission to log in as
a service on the new server under local policy and user rights management and the same account also has to be a
member of the Qlik Sense service users group on the new server optionally you also need to add it to your local
administrators group but of course you can run the services without local
admin rights if you need to upgrade your Qlik Sense server software say from version 3.2 to a more modern version like September
2020 as well as upgrading the environment which should you do first the software or the hardware i would
tackle the software first mainly for one reason you you have
probably run Qlik Sense on this environment for quite a while this environment is well known to
internal i.t staff its configuration is well known and hopefully very well documented and if something should go wrong
with either the upgrade or the migration it would be easier for for support to troubleshoot on an existing system that has known variables
and non-configuration than troubleshooting on a brand new system that makes sense okay so as a first step as reference in
the guide the first thing we need to take a look at and make sure that we have a good backup of articles and certificates
in this particular example we're going to be also moving the central node to a new host with a new name
that requires us to issue a set of certificates from the QMC as well as backing up the current central node certificates
manually an example of this type of data that is encrypted using your certificates would be connection strings one example of a
connection string that would break without the proper transfer certificates would be this this database is running on a separate machine
when the engine tries to access those those connection details it will also use certain certificates to read that data back
and it may not be able to so you said we need to export the certificates from here manually yeah so um as the host name changes for the
central node we will need to issue certificates from the QMC as well as back them up manually um that is because of course the the
hostname itself changes if if it if the entire machine including the host name would be migrated to a to a new
physical platform let's say but the host name is kept you only need to back up the certificates manually because the issuing authority as we will see in a
moment won't change it will still reference the the central node the central node always generates and signs
Backup Certificates from QMC
all certificates in a Qlik site and the number one consideration here is that you have to reference the fully qualified
domain name of the new machine and our target machine will be sent server too so let's go ahead and do that
and these these certificates of course are not uh the ones used for proxy communication so the these are not the certificates that you
present to your users via the browser but rather the certificates that Qlik Sense enterprise uses to communicate within its own services a certificate
password is recommended although not mandatory we will go ahead and leave this blank for now however pay extreme caution to this
option during a site migration it's mandatory to include the secret key in the trusted root certificate
otherwise the certificate chain will be broken and the new system will not be able to validate its own certificates properly
now there's a couple format options there do we need to export them in both formats or just which one is more important only windows
format is is required and in fact is the recommended format this pm format is a
linux compatible format for example if you if you want tls security between your central node and a postgres database like i have set up
you can use those to protect that traffic as well and i see there's a path there telling us where we're going to export
them to yep and this path by the way is local to the central node so let's assume i'm browsing to this address from a client
computer of course this path will not be present on the client computer we'll have to remote in just like we are now into the server and
grab it from there i've copied the the path we've exported certificates let's go take a look at what was
generated you can see this uh there is a new folder here matching what we've introduced in the machine name for the certificate export and it
contains three certificates the server the root and the client all three
must be transferred over to the new machine so what i typically like to do is copy them to a different location i have a shared folder here set up for
this exercise so we'll paste them in here and leave them as that now the next step would be to back to
bump manually and here's a way that you can run microsoft management console as a different user in this particular case
domain backslash qv service so you can navigate to see windows system32 find your mmc
Backup Certificates from MMC
executable shift right click to run as a different user
so we'll add two different snap-ins one for the current user account and since we logged in with account that runs the Qlik Sense services that will
give us access to the right certificate store the other one is the computer account and this is where your trusted certificate will be present so
let's start with a local account first and these are your machines trusted root certificates your list may be uh much longer depending on what
other trusted certification authorities your company trusts but the certificate that is auto generated by Qlik Sense will
typically have the fully qualified domain name of the machine it was generated on and dash ca format we'll go ahead and
export we absolutely must export the private key as well otherwise this certificate will not be useful to us on the new machine we also
should export all extended properties to make sure that all current properties in the certificate are transferred over to the new machine
we'll go ahead and set up passwords so that it lets us export is this going to export in the same format as the manual
export yes uh by default when you're exporting things from windows own certificate store they will always be in
uh pfx format or windows format as detailed in the QMC and Mario what's like the real purpose for
exporting manually and through the mmc um the original certificates
that we are backing up right now are essentially a worst case scenario recovery tool the new certificates that we've issued
through the QMC will be used on the new server
again always export the private key always export extended properties
and your Qlik client certificate as well same procedure always exporting the private key
always exporting extended properties and is this a password that you're kind of
making up now or is it a pre-existing password it's not an existing password it's just a password that windows uses to
sort of encrypt the certificate and it is required when you re-import it okay okay so now with our certificates backed up
it is time to take a note of the service cluster location this one we can close already so let's go back to our qmc
your service cluster is defined here so if this path changes at all
before starting up the services on the new machine we'll have to make sure that we've verified these settings and have updated
the paths using a small configuration tool that i'll i'll show you a little later but for the purposes of this migration
the new machine has access to that share yes and that is of course part of your planning as well you should always test access to all shared
resources between these machines so we've got our service cluster we've got our certificates backed up
now which step actually makes the back of everything in the QMC here all right so for that we'll need to actually back up the repository database
that is running in the background that is based on postgres and the details on how to do that are available on the help site
here we can see the step-by-step instructions and we start by stopping the Qlik Sense services
except the klisense repository database as we will access this to take that backup
you will need to open a command prompt with administrative privileges so copy and paste your command line from the help site however pay close
Backup Qlik Sense Repository
attention to the destination path for your backup hours will be slightly different and we can talk a little bit about what
we are typing here so pg dump is a built-in command from your postgres
utilities that is available uh with any installation of Qlik Sense enterprise we're defining the local
host as the target host if you happen to be running on a dedicated
postgres host this would have to change your port your main user that will be using to connect with this is the user that we
defined the super user password for during setup and that will be the password that is required and some options for taking the backup we're
using a binary file we are specifying that the file should be a tarball as we can see the dot tar extension
and the last bit of information here is the database that we wish to backup so this is not optional we need to specify qsr as th this is how the
database is defined internal
and before we do all that we'll need to make sure that our services are stopped so again we'll be relying on everything but
the repository database to be stopped a quick way to do that is to stop the repository service which will in turn stop every other service that is
dependent upon it with the exception of the service dispatcher which we'll have to stop manually your logging database
is unaffected by this process of great so everything's stopped so now we run the command and that creates the backup of our repository
right that's right troy a small tip i have for you when running the backup command it's
always a good idea to use the dash v for verbose flag this will have a more complete output on your screen about what's going on
and if something should go wrong we'll be able to catch that before we actually start the services and correct the problem
that's a great tip it should be the first argument it's asking for our password this is again the super user password that
you've defined during installation and that's it our backup should be ready and here we can see
the backup file is present and ready to go so we have our certificates we have along with all the apps and app objects
users user attributes your data connections your tasks however please keep in mind that there are special considerations
for changing domains changing the host name and moving your service cluster to a new path but basically
this will put everything back the way it was same apps same list of users same active directory same tasks
it will just rebuild it in a new environment with the same database that's correct Mario what happens if we missed one of those steps like with a
certificate forgot to include the private key or something like that so let's say the private key is missing
most likely the repository service will not be able to start fully and if it is able to start it won't be able to decrypt all
the data in the database i mean it's just a checkbox so it feels like a human error is pretty possible there would it actually tell
you that you forgot to include the private key yes there is a log file in the following location so we'll have to
go to your log folder under program data we'll search for the repository trace and the security repository log file will contain information
about your secrets and your cryptokey access okay let's say your Qlik client certificate was not exported with its private key
the ultimate effect is that all your data connection passwords won't be decryptable anymore so let's say you have 15
data connections that use passworded connection string you will have 30 error messages in the in this particular log
is there anything left back up or do we move on to the importing process of the new system there is one more item that i
Backup Qlik folder
recommend backing up always and that does require stopping all services including the repository database and that is the contents of a
program data folder and contains a raw copy of your database
and it also includes your local logs and a couple of other items like your host config it's good to have in case something goes
wrong and the original system is no longer available and must be rebuilt this is one of the items that you'll use to uh to rebuild the system
and that's just a straight up copy of the entire Qlikfolder yeah one more item please consider your custom connector packages
either from Qlik or a third-party provider if you use odbc you will need to recreate these connections on the new
server preferably with the same names so that you do not have to then go in and edit any of your clip scripts
um or modify your existing data connections in the new environment but aside from that we now have a full site backup
and we're ready to bring this content over to the new machine where Qlik Sense September 2020 release is already installed we have decided to
create a new cluster with its own database so there is a postgres instance on that machine as well so that we can import the data
after so as you can see here we have all services installed and running under the same service account as uh send server one so what we're looking at right now is
just out of a box install everything's default pretty much fresh and ready to go this is the first time i'm logging in
it's ready to be licensed there is nothing going on here
first things first we will start on the destination machine by importing those certificates i recommend that we start this process by stopping all
services do we leave the database running yes we'll we'll take everything down just to make sure that no ports in use
nothing that can uh prevent us from from doing what we need to do here so here i'm accessing the uh the shared location where we've backed
up all of our content let's go ahead and import these certificates first find your mmc executable
now of course when you set up a new environment or a new server to receive data from an old server you will have
certificates we'll need to get rid of those as we are importing certificates from an existing environment and we don't want
there to be any clashes inside a certificate store or any duplicate values that may confuse the services when starting up
that makes sense you want one set of certificates nothing that might conflict when you're importing certificates are there any windows security rules that
might cause problems when you're importing absolutely good great point i'm glad you you brought that up
Windows Security Policy
new security policies have kicked into place that may prevent services from starting up completely i'll show exactly what i'm talking about
there is a local security policy under security options the policy that we need to look for is under the
system cryptography setting and it's this one system cryptography
for strong key protection for user user keys stored on the computer if this policy is set up to any of these two last options
here on the menu you will be first prompted to assign a new password that has nothing to do with the password that you've used to encrypt
the certificates when backing up windows will require you to enter every time you access this should be set to that first option
or not set at all they were saying not set at all just to make sure that you can at least import the certificate and mind you
that option has to be disabled only during the short period of time it takes you to import the certificates you can enable it on the server again
after the certificates were imported because that policy governs only new certificates it is not retroactive that's another great tip okay back to
Restore Certificates
importing so uh let's start by importing the trusted certificate under the local computer
account uh and as i mentioned before since this setup was started albeit in a blank state
the certificates have been generated for the current empty install so we'll need to get rid of these to make sure that there are no
duplicates no backup necessary i'm just going to go ahead and delete these now this new certificate that we didn't
see on the origin machine Qlik service cluster certificate this is only useful to multi-cloud deployment sites where you are
distributing applications to Qlik cloud services it is not the case here so i'm i'm ignoring that certificate as well
the other certificate that we need to get rid of is Qlik client that's all gone we'll go ahead and import them in the right order
right click here all tasks and import the correct store will already be pre-selected and cannot be changed and we'll go ahead and navigate to
our backup location as this is a complete swap of a central node to a new
hostname we'll import the certificates that were manually exported from the original machine.
I just want to point out that importing from either certificate backup is correct, but we recommend using the QMC export with the correctly defined name.
then we'll go ahead and import the
server certificate into the personal store
mark the key as exportable so that you can then take another backup that includes all properties
and since we did not define a password during the export from the QMC we won't have to specify one here
and the last one is going to be our Qlik client certificate
if you don't see the certificate that you're looking for just drop down and select all files and select your client search
but here is another option that users must pay extreme caution to this first option directly relates to that local security
policy that we saw about uh strongly protecting local client keys please do not check this as this will then
prompt for a password every time the certificate is being accessed and of course we want to make sure that the private key is exportable and we
include all the extended properties and we'll leave it in the personal store
and that's it okay so all the certificates are imported what's next yep certificates are in place
what's next database operations first drop the current empty database you can drop it via pg admin if you have this installed or
available via a different service or you can do it via the command line the steps for the command line are detailed
in the help uh however the steps for pg admin are not but of course it's a it's a more visually appealing tool and
easier to use so let's go ahead and take a look at that let's set up a new connection our current server is 100 15.
the standard port where the postgres repository is running is port 4432 the username and the password will be the one defined
during setup
there we go there we go as you can see you have several databases in this
database engine so this is a an easy step as you can see we'll we'll have our schema and our tables
this is where Qlik Sense stores all of your data or you can use pg admin to manage your database to take backups and
restore we'll have to drop the table of course you can do that by delete drop alternatively we can use the instructions from the help site
Drop blank Qlik Sense Repository
we'll go ahead and copy this content as we've copied it from the help site and drop it in here again we are connecting
uh locally to this current database host with the port and this username and we
are trying to drop the qsr database no other tasks running in parallel for example a backup task running on an automated script when you
are trying to do this just right click and disconnect the database so let's go ahead and do that now
prevented the super user password and there we go so now going back to pg admin i'll just go ahead and refresh
and you can see qsr is gone we'll use the createdb command again connecting locally to the same port with the same username
we'll use the template 0 to give us a basic schema backend however there will be no tables recreated based on this or anything else
all of that is taken care of by the repository service during the initial startup so it seeds the database if it's empty
simple as copy and paste right click to paste here is there a way to add the -v to add some verboseness to that to actually
see what happens as well yes i do recommend just as we used -v for verbose flag during the backup we
will use the same during the restore so that we get an actual feed of all the tasks that are that are being
run in the background so let's go ahead and create this
database apparently i cannot type my password right now
and there we go so just to illustrate we'll go ahead and refresh this again and here we have a qsr database with a public schema with no tables
so how do we get this data back of course you can still use pg admin to restore your existing file you would use the restore function and
navigate to your tarball and click restore watch for the progress we'll go ahead and use the manual method which is defined in our online help you
can see here i've added a variable path to backup file i'll copy everything up to that point and then we'll go ahead and copy the
Restore Qlik Sense Repository
path of the tarball manually so we'll paste that in here we have our qsr backup again this is
currently sitting on a shared drive we'll go ahead and bring this locally
i've created a folder here beforehand called qsr backup and a quick way to grabbing paths from from existing files is again to shift
right click and there is this wonderful option here copy as path that already includes double quotes
so that if this sits in a folder structure with spaces in it it would work just by copying it and pasting it here as we can see
it is recommended that you add dash v for verbose output to this command as well this is where we will spot any any problems during the
import procedure before that let's go ahead and make sure that we're disconnected from the database so that we can use it
and we are ready to hit enter yeah i love that verbose tip it's so satisfying seeing streams of text scroll across
command prompt indeed you you very seldom do something in the in the command prompt that doesn't offer an immediate output yeah
there we go creating indexes constraints uh adding foreign key constraints adding the data
um if there were any problems here at the very end of this uh message we would see that the project process something like process finished
successfully with so and so many warnings we've restored so now we can verify that the uh the data is actually there
let's refresh go into our qsr database and look at the tables
whereas previously just after recreating the database from template there were no tables now we have all all the content
so now we have our certificates imported we have all the repository metadata
present on the new system and our rim node is still active and talking
so we'll try to stand up the services on the new central node will make sure
first that the old central node is it fully stopped that's back on send server one yep that back on send server one will
make sure that everything is stopped and it is repository database first
Start Qlik Sense Services
service dispatcher second and the repository service a closed third and we'll be monitoring the activity on the server on on that
server specifically just to make sure that everything is uh coming up as expected so we'll navigate to our
log folder into repository and trace and you can see here there's a bunch of
new log files these are automatically rolled over upon service restart and after reaching a certain point during
the startup phase they will be automatically moved over to your archived logs folder location if everything goes fine you will
eventually see these files magically disappear i am comfortable to start bringing up other services such as the
engine proxy your printing your scheduler if you see this in your logs there is typically one
root cause the repository service at this point since we have aha on purpose missed the step
won't get past this point the internal host name for the central node inside
the Qlik Sense repository does not match your machine name nor the machine name for which the certificates were reissued samaya i'm a little confused which step
did we miss uh we missed the all important bootstrap step this is a command that you need to run
Bootstrap command
on the new central node that will automatically update the hostname values for the new central node in
inside the database and also recreate any certificates that are that are necessary based on the trusted root certificate available on
the machine so let's go ahead and run through this process now we'll have to put it in bootstrap mode run it in standalone so
that it runs through this special mode and then restore hostname is the special command that we need to use to make sure that
the internal values are updated
of course need to make sure that the repository service is stopped and every other service is stopped on the machine other than the repository database
the service dispatcher does not cross in my fingers
so this will recreate any certificates that are missing and also bind them to the appropriate services
and once it enters main startup phase it will exit out again and at that point we should be comfortable that
the database has been one fully restored into uh properly configured to operate on this new
machine so once again and this time for good let's uh start things up and we'll once more monitor the
startup procedure to make sure that everything is running smoothly
and real quick again what is the order for starting up the services
service dispatcher first repository database repository service let that run for a few seconds make sure that things are
starting up correctly by looking at the file and then everything else of course the logging uh
the login service database i have to start that before anything else as well and as this one is independent from all
other services but the my preferred order afterwards after repository service is fully running
is to go engine proxy scheduler printing
here we go nice and clean folder here means all of our previously generated
log files were successfully archived that means our service cluster is fully accessible by the new system we have the right permissions set up for
the service user so are we at that glorious
point where we get to check the hub yes sir yes we are let's log into the QMC first
and we have a platform let's check the node status again these are still talking to each other
still five by five on the rim node it looks just like it did so the final
test dealing with existing data connections that have credentials associated with them
one quick test uh is to just run one of those reload tasks and see if we can get the app again so for that let's just go to the hub
are authenticated we can see our applications let's go look at our postgres sql data test
now this is an app just to sort of test that data connection you've set up that's correct that's correct it's currently set up to reload once a day
but we can trigger this manually real quick just to make sure that the timestamp is updated let's go ahead and reload that task
and make sure it's still running
it already finished latest data reload 1235. so everything seems to be working so far
there are a number of other considerations that we didn't touch on today the bulk of the time taken here is prep
work and then actually backing up your content we recommend a maintenance window for any such procedure
are there any resources available to make this process easier here's some documentation on how to set up Qlik Sense from scratch
Automation
using the silent install method that's for setting up in terms of automating the backing up and restoring of the environment
a simple powershell script that triggers the pg backup and the p2 restore command on the target server
would be enough here's a great place to start for what happens next this will set you up with great activities to run on a
Qlik Sense Admin Playbook
daily weekly monthly quarterly and yearly basis but i highly encourage you all sense admins to start here and familiarize
yourself with this content and with that that was it for me thank you all very much for joining us today troy
now it's time for q a go ahead and place your questions anything questions you might have in the q a panel on the left side of your own 24
console Mario which question would you like to address first well troy there's a a very interesting question here about
Q & A
update sequence um somebody is asking when upgrading a multi-node Qlik Sense environment can you go straight to the latest update or is it best practice to
install updates sequentially i'm not sure if everyone is aware about
this but all of our updates are cumulative so if you jump between two major feature releases let's say between
april and September you will also get all the content that was delivered in the june release which was skipped so there is no need to do
sequential updates um however be careful uh with how big a jump you're making
between between versions um for the very very old versions there are some special considerations however when
moving between modern versions post feature releases in in 2018 you can just jump over to the to the latest
i would suggest that the bigger jump you make the more testing and validation you should do to make sure that everything
in the system works fine including applications under objects as we um we have made quite a few changes in recent releases
and added new content uh but other than that yep you can you can jump straight to the uh to the latest
the same applies for patches by the way so uh you can go from patch one to patch five knowing that everything on two three and
four is also included okay next one all right uh
let's see what uh special considerations are there if we're migrating from a physical server to an aws environment um well pretty much all the networking
considerations they have in a windows environment uh physical on-prem except you will have to deal with aws's
networking services network load balancer etc and make sure that the access route that users are going to take to reach your system
is fully open and configured to accept connections for Qlik Sense um if uh if there are any doubts about how to how to achieve this or something
isn't working as expected feel free to contact Qlik support we'd love to take a look and help you out all right let's see
a bunch of really interesting questions here um yeah someone is mentioning that there's a new certificate that showed up during the
presentation um that we haven't seen before this is called Qlik Sense Qlik service cluster sorry
and it's a brand new certificate introduced in the September 2020 release and this is used for um multi-cloud environments
that have a windows on-prem installation and want to distribute apps to a Kubernetes install or to our own Qlik cloud services um
and just as uh the rest of these certificates this one also has to be backed up during a migration process or during
your normal backup procedures um and will have to be restored as well in the case of a migration the help Qlik help site has been
updated to reflect this step as well so if you follow those procedures you'll be fully covered on certificate backup and restore
and another short question what about using block storage um if you're referring to the service cluster
using block storage there is not advised as we'll will need ntfs file policies to be to be enforced which means the
file share hosting your service cluster should be hosted by a windows box
just acting as a file server so that you can always keep permissions under control and it's easier to troubleshoot
we also support certain type of nas configurations provided that the permission layer of ntfs or
smb protocol is the very latest one used and there are no restrictions to file
access the reason why this is a new change is that in the old days uh smaller capacity
nas boxes for example would have restrictions such as file listing um so this is something to keep in mind but for block storage specifically
um we don't currently support this as far as i'm aware because it does not support the ntfs permission layer and
our product relies on it to to control access to files however i do recommend that in cloud providers in your virtual cloud
provider you try to deploy um instances with flash storage wherever um file hosting is
uh is going to be placed and and that is especially important for the server that hosts your service cluster flashback storage is going to be faster
than than hard drives and it will help performance as well as access times to smaller apps
um and someone is asking if uh the process that we've walked through today is the same as for migrating QlikView server
and the short answer is no um these two procedures are of course very very different
because the products are very very different if you want to know more about how to migrate QlikView server correctly from machine to machine please
refer to our online help and knowledge base articles that are present on clean community and again for any issues that may occur
during that process contact Qlik support uh yeah there's there's a couple here that have to do with uh changes to apps after such
migration uh there's one asking about apps needing to be imported individually of course not um in the presentation we
saw a migration process that did not involve moving the service cluster over to a new location however the service cluster
hosts all of your apps and and other app metadata that is not present in the database so
by directing your new environment to an existing file share that hosts the service cluster or by moving those files across
you are essentially moving all of your apps over so you won't have to import them into the QMC one by one and the other question is for the
operations monitor and other monitoring apps available in the system can they be configured to read
from the previous environment logs as well as the new ones and the answer is yes of course all you have to do is go into your um
into your system enable a security rule so that one of your root admins or one of your administrators can see all of the uh back end rest connections
um and the uh the folder connections and just create one for the uh for the new location however the old
logs um the old logs will also be present in your QVDs as they get reloaded on the old system QVDs would have been generated so if you
move those across to a location where the current monitoring apps can can access them that data will still be present so
you're not going to have a clean split between between data in these monitoring apps unless you get rid of the old QVDs or
never import them let's say and just reload on the new environment from scratch that would then only show you the the
new environment data okay Mario we have time for one last question all right so um somebody's asking here
about upgrading from a old version of Qlik Sense say 3.2 to the latest which would be September 2020 as well as upgrading
their hardware at the same time this this type of migration
uh i would raise quite a lot of caution here this is a huge jump and many back-end modifications have happened in the product since uh Qlik Sense 3.2 or
the numbered versions um there are very detailed articles on
on Qlik support and Qlik community on how to do this correctly it involves jumping to a intermediary version somewhere slightly more modern than
Qlik Sense 3.2 but not quite as recent as one of the 2020 releases and then from that point onward you can
jump over to any of the the latest releases however as advised during the presentation i would first tackle the product upgrade
validate that everything is still working as expected correct any issues that you see there and then once happy with the performance of the
existing system at least on the new version considering any hardware limitations i would then start planning the
migration to new hardware all right so that was that was it for today thank you all very much for joining us
and submitting your questions uh this has been a blast and looking forward to the next one okay great thank you everyone we hope
you enjoyed this session and thank you to Mario for presenting we appreciate getting experts like Mario to share with us
here's our legal disclaimer and thank you once again have a great rest of your day
Hi
I'm still having issues with cert when following this guide.
It worked once (with MMC-certs) but I messed up the pg-unbundling + following upgrade way after and have tried to clear the machine wo success.
The old machine is running Feb 2021 Patch 8 so the new machine is installed with the same version.
If I export certs from QMC with "include secret key" and use the fqdn for the new machine the bootstrap-handling doesn't work.
If I use the MMC exported certs the bootstrap will start but now it hangs on the "Entering main startup phase".
It is not mentioned in the video but the documentation state that the Service Dispatcher Service should be started when this message is displayed. What is correct?
Everything point towards an issue with the certs and machine names but I made sure that all original certs are removed and the MMC-certs are exported according to the documentation and imported correctly.
The new machine has a similar name as the original, qliksense vs abcd-qliksense. I'm even logged in as the service-account. There is no issues reaching license.qlikcloud.com so things fail locally.
If I check the repo-logs there are many warnings like this:
"System.Repository.Repository.Core.Licensing.LicensesInitializer 3 6143eb0d-762c-4ab6-8f07-7a27c4b27b00 domain\Qlik-Service There was an error contacting the license service. Keep retrying... (20 failed requests) GET /v1/licenses/overview StatusCode: InternalServerError Response: . Could not connect to the license service. NO-STACKTRACE".
This process need to be improved somehow... we're facing many migration in the near future due to Server 2012.
We had to bring back the old machine to have a working environment after 12h downtime. 😞
/lars
