Upgrade planning

Prerequisites

To plan for the upgrade of the software, review all relevant sections in the Plan chapter of this guide. In particular, review the sections on system architecture, client types, IT requirements, licensing, cybersecurity, and deployment considerations. Also review the Install and Upgrade chapter which provides details on the upgrade work-flow.

Upgrade support and limitations

Upgrade version support

The PME upgrade tools support upgrades of software versions that are up to 6 major releases behind the latest version. That means the following upgrades are supported for PME 2024:

From	To
PME 2023	PME 2024
PME 2022	PME 2023
PME 2021	PME 2022
PME 2020	PME 2021
PME 9.0	PME 2020
PME 8.2	PME 9.0

PME 8.1, 8.0, and 7.2.2 systems cannot be upgraded using the PME 2024 installer. To upgrade a PME 8.1, 8.0, and 7.2.2 system, use the Configuration Manager 2024 tool. See Upgrades from PME 8.1, 8.0, and 7.2.2 for more information.

See PME release history for more information.

NOTE: To upgrade PME 7.2.x systems, you must first apply the latest service packs to get the systems to version PME 7.2.2. See Upgrade tools and resources for information on where to find the service packs.

Contact technical support if you want to upgrade older versions of the software that are not supported by the tools.

Upgrade limitations

Only upgrades within the same architecture are supported (Standalone -> Standalone, Distributed Database -> Distributed Database).
Only upgrades within the same language are supported, for example English -> English, Spanish -> Spanish, ... .

Upgrade limitations specific to side-by-side upgrades

You cannot downgrade to an earlier version of SQL. For example go from a PME with SQL 2016 to PME with SQL 2012. You can always migrate to a new version of SQL Server.
You cannot downgrade to SQL Express from any version of SQL. You can however migrate from SQL Express to any other version of SQL.

Determine your upgrade path

An upgrade path describes from which older system to which newer system PME is upgraded. The upgrade path includes the PME version and edition and the system architecture. For example, upgrading from PME 2022 Standard Edition standalone architecture to PME 2024 Standard Edition standalone architecture is an upgrade path.

There are many possible upgrade paths, but only some are supported by the In-Place and Side-by-Side upgrade tools and procedures. Use the Upgrade Map tool to find the supported upgrade paths and methods for your system. See Upgrade tools and resources for information on where to get the Upgrade Map tool.

NOTE: Upgrade paths that are not listed by the Upgrade Map are considered custom upgrades. If you need to perform a custom upgrade, contact technical support for help.

Determine the upgrade type

NOTE: Determine your upgrade path before deciding on the upgrade type. Not all upgrade types are supported for all upgrade paths.

There are two different upgrade types, In-Place Upgrade and Side-by-Side (SBS) Upgrade. Each type uses different tools and has different prerequisites.

In-place upgrade

Use an In-Place upgrade to upgrade an older version of PME to the latest version on the same computer. The upgrade replaces the old system files with new files and leaves the old configuration and data in place. After the upgrade, the new software has the same configuration and data as the old. The installer of the new PME version performs an In-Place upgrade automatically if it detects that an old version of the software exists on the computer.

Advantages of an in-place upgrade

The installer of the new software automatically does the upgrade.
Very little user interaction is needed.
The same computer is used for the new version of the software as for the old version before.
All non-PME settings and configurations on the computer stay as they were.

Disadvantages of an in-place upgrade

The computer hardware is the same as before, which means the performance of the new system on the old computer might not be as expected.
The OS and DB Server versions are the same as before, which means the performance of the new system on the old OS and DB Server versions might not be as expected.
The power monitoring system is unavailable during the upgrade process until the new system has been put into service.
The old system is no longer available after the upgrade. A downgrade is not possible.
Only more recent versions of the software can be upgraded in place. An in-place upgrade for older versions may not be possible.

Side-by-side upgrade

Use an SBS upgrade to copy the configuration and data of an old PME system to a new system on a different computer. The new version of PME is installed on a new computer. The old version of PME stays installed on the old computer. After the SBS upgrade, the new software has the same configuration and data as the old one but exists on a different computer. SBS upgrades are performed manually with the Configuration Manager tool. See Upgrade tools and resources for information on where to get the Configuration Manager tool.

Advantages of an SBS upgrade

The new PME system is installed on a new computer that can be sized to meet your performance expectations.
The new PME system is installed on a new OS and DB server version.
The old PME system stays in service until the new system is ready to be put into service.
A parallel operation of the old and new systems for a certain amount of time might be possible.
The old system stays available after the upgrade.
Many older PME versions and editions can be upgraded SBS.

Disadvantages of an SBS upgrade

The upgrade process is more complex than an in-place upgrade and takes more time.
A new computer is used for the new version of the software, which means that any non-PME settings and configurations must be recreated on the new computer.

TLS 1.2 and security certificates

See Transport Layer Security (TLS) and digital certificates in the Install Planning section of this guide for details.

Windows Integrated Authentication for SQL Server

NOTE: Windows Integrated Authentication is not supported for PME systems with Secondary Servers.

PME can be installed with either SQL Server Authentication or Windows Integrated Authentication for SQL database server access.

SQL Server Authentication

This is the traditional way of installing PME with database access through both Windows accounts and SQL user accounts. With SQL Server Authentication, the PME installer creates a number of SQL accounts and a Windows account during the installation of the software. These accounts are then used during operation to access the databases. See SQL Server accounts for details on which accounts are created.

Windows Integrated Authentication

With Windows Integrated Authentication PME uses a Windows account, instead of the SQL accounts, to access the SQL server databases. You must create this Windows account before installing the software and provide account details during the installation. The Windows account must have the required access permissions to the SQL Server database. See Windows accounts for account details. See Before upgrading the software and After upgrading the software for more information on Windows Integrated Authentication requirements.

NOTE: When PME is installed with Windows Integrated Authentication, the Windows account that is used to access the database is also used to run the PME services and the IIS Application Pools.

Cybersecurity

Review the cybersecurity information. See Cybersecurity for details.

Miscellaneous

Hard disk drive (HDD) allocation

HDD read/write operations have a big impact on system performance. To optimize your system performance, plan to have different HDDs installed for the system files, the database files, and the Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ) files.

The software uses MSMQ for writing device data logs to the SQL database. By storing the MSMQ files on a different HDD from the database files, both can be written to simultaneously, increasing system performance. For details on optimizing SQL Server performance and changing the MSMQ storage location, see information from Microsoft and other sources available online.

Historical Data Management

Consider archiving and trimming the historical data in the existing system before upgrading. This reduces the upgrade time and improves performance on the new system. After the upgrade, the Alarms Web application processes existing Power Quality data the first time it starts up. This processing is very time consuming. You can control how much of the existing data is processed to reduce the processing time. See Configuring first time Alarms processing for more information.