I have a list of questions to help us move forward with the SP4 upgrade to Solidworks.

Because of the numerous issues we had with SP3 and past updates I’m wanting to build a brand new server and have a new Stage and Prod server based around it.

The plan:

1. Build two brand new servers: 1 App server and 1 SQL Server.
   1. Possibly build a SQL Cluster if it is supported.
2. Install Solidworks 2016 SP4 as a full install.
3. Import the files and database from production (currently SP3) into this new server.
4. Follow up to make sure that I’m not missing any custom changes our VAR required us to do to fix some of the problems.
   1. Added that step because some of the issues that we came across were not fixed by Solidworks.
5. Run through all of our testing (very thorough testing).
6. Copy any newly changed data from production to this server once testing is complete (both files and database)
   1. I’ll need to know what steps would be the most efficient so that I don’t have to copy the entire database and all files again (if that is possible).
7. Clone the server and use the clone as our new test\QA server.
   1. Change the name of the clone.
   2. Create a NEW test vault.
   3. Restore the production database to the new TEST vault.
   4. Delete the production information from the registry, software, and hard drive (only thing left should be the TEST vault)
   5. Make any necessary changes to registry and\or database as well as license manager to be used as our test system
9. Install SP4 on all of the client machines
10. Point all of the new applications to the new server name (production, not the clone). In this case it will be a CNAME to make things much easier in the future.

Questions:

1. Can I have a SP4 install ready to go and then import the database and files from an SP3 version or do I have to start with SP3, import, and then upgrade afterwards?
   1. If putting SP3 database and files on an SP4 software install doesn’t work, why doesn’t it work; what breaks?
2. What is the latest version of SQL Server that I can get for the current version of Solidworks?
3. Does the latest version support SQL Clustering?
4. I’m wanting to separate the application server from the SQL server. Is there much of a benefit to doing that?
5. Finding the full Solidworks SP4 install software (vs just the upgrade download) on Solidworks’ site is not an easy task.
   1. Can you get me a link so that I can download the FULL install package and not just the upgrade package?
   2. Will that include the latest supported MS SQL software or will that need to be a separate download?
6. What is the latest Windows OS that is supported by Solidworks?
7. What kind of problems will I run into if I clone a server and change the name of the server?