How do I move my SLC installation from one server to a new (replacement) server?
Altair EmployeeThis article describes the steps involved in preparing and commissioning a new SLC server host machine and decommissioning the old server. These steps can apply to any SLC server environment on-premise or in-cloud. The notes on installing the software should also be followed - see the documents supplied with the product.
If you are moving to a cloud environment for the first time then you should pay particular attention to whether data connections from the SLC server to/from your data files and databases will be sufficiently performant compared to your on-premise configuration. In addition test the responsiveness/latency of the Altair Analytics Workbench when connecting to a cloud based SLC server.
We recommend setting up a test system in the new environment using temporary copies of all data in order to establish that the new environment is performing properly before switching over.
If you are considering upgrading to a new version of SLC or making other significant changes then it is best to change one major aspect at a time - perhaps do the software upgrade and verify that it has been successful before doing the migration to the new server. i.e. One major step at a time.
After a new SLC server has been configured and is ready-to-use then the user community will need to reconfigure their Workbench workspaces to connect to the new server. You can help them by providing .CDX files (exported from your own Workbench) that the users can import into their workspaces. But if the only change is the name of the server host then you can provide them with simple instructions for changing the hostname.
Steps:
You will wish to retain the same usernames, authentication, file ownership, database authentication etc. The new target server needs to be connected to the same domain.
The SSH service must be enabled and port must be open between the workstations and the target server on the network and users must be able to login to the server via SSH.
The folder structure is recommended to be replicated into the new server to minimize code level changes with folder paths.
Follow the SLC installation instructions to install SLC on the new server.
Copy any modified .cfg files from the old server to the new server.
On Linux servers, copy the altairslcenv.sh file from the old server to the new server (if this file exists).
If system environment variables were used to provide SLC with access to database drivers (e.g. PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH) then these will need configuring on the new server.
When SLC runs on the new server, it will need to find an SLC license i.e. either connect to the Altair hosted license server, or to your on-premise Altair ALM license manager, or to a legacy WPSKEY license. You will need to configure the license and configure SLC to find the license.
If Python or R were made available to SLC users on the old server, these need to be installed and configured on the new server, and any necessary packages (e.g. numpy and pandas for python) need to be installed.
Install the same set of database drivers on the new server as were installed on the old server. This may require downloading and configuring the drivers in the same manner as before. In the case of ODBC drivers, DSN's need to be configured in the ODBC system as they were in the old system. A connection validation must be performed when connecting to a remote DB server from the new server. e.g. sqlplus if oracle, psql if postgres, isql if odbc.