During a routine call to WebTrends technical support a couple of weeks ago, I was asked an interesting questions by them. The question was "Which download of WebTrends 8.1a was I using?".
This question took me a second to digest. I dug a little deeper to only discover that some time in the middle of January of this year, they posted a revised version of WebTrends 8.1 on their FTP site. This posting had no fanfare and no announcement. I guess they just assumed that anyone installing 8.1a would simply download the newer version automatically. They didn't think about people like myself and my firm to help companies install their product. We keep the latest version of WebTrends on our USB keys so our clients don't have to download them.
Not being told there was a revision is a little disheartening.
However that being said, I've personally did one complete install of WebTrends 8.1a from stratch and was by far the smoothest install of 8.1a I had to date. In fact, there were any problems what so ever. Of course, this client had a properly sized server with ample RAM and hard drive space.
I just completed a reinstall of 8.1a on my company's test WebTrends sever and all went smooth. We're going to be doing a bit more testing, but it is starting to look like the upgrade to WebTrends 8.1 might finally be good enough to recommended it clients. Let me test it a bit further before you take that big jump.
However, if you're planning on simply installing it from scratch on a new server without porting all your existing data, I'm very happy to now recommended it. As always, read the installation guide first and make sure you have a minimum of 3 gigs of RAM or 4 gigs of RAM per processor if you're planning on using the WebTrends GeoTrends module.
As always, if you can afford it, I recommend having a firm like my company (K'nechtology) or WebTrends itself come out and help you install and configure the product plus get your WebTrends Administrators some training. WebTrends is not a simple product to manage and a lot more difficult to install correctly than an out of the box product like MS Office or Adobe Photoshop.
4 comments:
Hi,
I tried installing the webtrends 8.1a. everything went well but I am having problem in activating the account.
I tried to activate the account with the license key I have but unable to activate.
Coule you please help me in this if you have any idea.
Thanks in advance.
I've seen that problem in the past.
What has most likely happened is one of the following
1. Either you license key had expired (in which case you shouldn't have upgraded)
2. Your old key isn't compatible with WebTrends 8.1 and it should have automatically upgraded, but it failed
In either case, you need to call WebTrends Technical Support. They can issue you a compatible 8.1 key provided your license is current.
Hey Alan,
We're currently doing our very 1st Webtrends upgrade with the following path:
v7.5a to 8.0d to 8.1a
When I scour through the webtrends site, I can't see any documentation on Upgrading Webtrends, all the doc's seem to point to a fresh build. Although the readme points out that a "upgrade" can be done, theirs no guideline to follow.
I see in a previous post you stated you would be posting a upgrade guide
Ref: http://www.knecht-it.com/2007_09_01_archive.html
Do you happen to have that available?
Thanks In Advance,
Billy.
Billy,
The upgrade path is someone simple.
Step 1 - pause all profiles
Step 2 - back-up everything this means everything in the Webtrends isnallation directory ../program files/webtrends plus all the sub-directories
Step 3 - Start the upgrades
You have it right, you need to upgrade but upgrade to 7.5b (I think that was the last version of 7.5).
Then you need to upgrade to 8.0d
After the upgrade to WebTrends 8.0d. Verify all profiles are fine (never had a problem) and even run one profile update. Then back it all up again and start the upgrade to 8.1a
Depending on how many profiles and how big the database is, I'd budget a minimum of 2 days for this upgrade if not 3 days.
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