[LON-CAPA-admin] System Upgrades

[James Clawson]

I have inherited the job of system administration of the LONCAPA system 
in the Physics Department at the University of South Carolina 
(domain:sc).  We have 3 physical servers, one library, and 2 access.  
All of the systems are running CentOS 5.5 and LONCAPA 2.9.1-2010112008.  
I would like to upgrade these.  Here are some of the questions I have...

Should I upgrade the OS first and then LONCAPA?  From what I have read, 
I could install the latest CentOS from scratch on the access servers and 
then the latest LONCAPA.  Then I would upgrade the library server OS 
after backing it up, then upgrade LONCAPA.

Do all the servers need to be done at the same time?  Can I "practice" 
on one of the access servers to get my feet wet, then do the other 
access server, then the library server?  This may go over multiple days.

Should I wait until we are not using the system (mid to late December) 
to attempt this.

TIA,
James



-- 
James Clawson, Jr.
Laboratory Manager
University of South Carolina
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Jones PSC Room 402D
803-777-8994