Out-of-place upgrade of SEPM 11 to SEPM 12

Hi,

We have a simple environment: no replication, one LiveUpdate server in the DMZ, and one SEPM 11.0.5002.333 server inside. There are around 1,500 clients and we use the embedded database.

We want to do an out-of-place upgrade (or what I call a migration) from SEPM 11 to SEPM 12, without changing the existing SEPM 11 production environment. In other words, a phased upgrade, bringing clients gradually across to SEPM 12, so that any potential problems and headaches are averted.

I think this should be possible using the steps below, but it would be good if someone could confirm this:

1. Create new Windows servers
2. Install SEPM 12 (independent of existing SEPM 11 install)
3. Export policies on SEPM 11 and import into SEPM 12
4. Manually bring other settings across and configure SEPM 12 as required
5. Select a few SEPM 11 clients (for testing so to speak) and with the sylink tool, point these clients at SEPM 12
6. Upgrade the selected clients to version 12
7. Test and tweak with the now-upgraded clients
8. Once all good, point remainder clients at SEPM 12 and upgrade
9. Remove SEPM 11 servers

Now one thing that will happen is that we will loose the history of the clients; I can live with that.

As far as alternative approaches go, I have seen a discussion around first creating a duplicate SEPM 11 server, then either replicating or doing a database backup and recovery. Then its upgrading to SEPM 12. This was done in order to upgrade the underlying Windows version and I think that is a good approach for that. But, this does not solve the problem of having to upgrade to SEPM 12 in one go with all the production clients connected to it, which is just too risky.

Thanks for reading and don't be shy to comment with recommendations or better still a go-ahead with the above steps,

someforum64