Installation Guides › Upgrade Guide › Planning Migration and Upgrades › How to Plan a Migration Strategy › Plan a Recovery Strategy

Plan a Recovery Strategy

You should implement a recovery plan that lets you return to your original configuration if the upgrade fails. You cannot undo a migration or upgrade and should back up your entire environment before beginning a migration.

Important! The most complete recovery plan is to back up each machine's entire image, which includes Policy Servers and SOA Agents. We recommend this method.

If you do not want to back up the entire image of each system, do the following:

• Back up all SOA Agent and Policy Server binaries. Most of these files are in the bin subdirectory where you installed the Policy Server and SOA Agent.
• Back up the SOA Agent configuration file

  If you intend to manage Agents centrally from a r12.1 Policy Server, you need to supply the Agent configuration file to the Policy Server administrator. The Administrator will need this file to create an Agent Configuration Object, which defines the Agent's configuration at the Policy Server.

  Note: More information on centrally managing SOA Agents exists in the Policy Configuration Guide.

• Export the policy store in clear-text to a file using the smobjexport tool.

  Exporting the policy store in clear-text provides you with a record of encrypted information, such as shared secrets. This information may also be used to troubleshoot problems. If your key store resides in the policy store, use the -k option with smobjexport since to ensure keys are included with the exported information.

  Note: If the r12.1 Policy Server uses the same encryption key as the SOA Security Manager R12 Policy Server, you do not need to export the data stores in clear-text. Using clear-text is necessary only if the old and new Policy Servers use different encryption keys.

  Important! Ensure you are using the appropriate SiteMinder 6.0 SP5 version of smobjexport when exporting policy store data.

• Copy the r12.0 installation scripts, hot fixes, and service packs so you can re-install if necessary. You can download copies from the Technical Support site.