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Author
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Topic: DCI Compliant Servers (features, undocumented or otherwise)
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Brad Miller
Administrator
Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99
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posted 08-21-2012 07:35 PM
Central (GMT -6:00) (1:35 AM Local)
The Dolby is by far the easiest to upgrade. It takes about 30 minutes as you found, but note you can do the entire building worth of YOUR work in 10-15 minutes (depending on number of screens). Then you just wait another 10-20 minutes for the updates to finish on their own. Tremendously simple and no catastrophes. As Steve said, this also had no impact on the staff, as the operating procedures and 6-7 minute boot time remained identical. This is a TRUE "remote upgrade". We handled these at the NOC for our customers.
The Doremi for me was a little frustrating, as I am running 4 drive raids and since I had to change the OS chips on most of them, the servers "woke up" with the default 3 drive raid, meaning I was starting over from scratch on content and OS config. I don't think most people are running 4 drive raids (and certainly those that won't need to change the OS chip) will have that hassle. The screens where I did not have to change the OS chip went quickly and smoothly, about 20-30 minutes. Regardless, it is NOT a "remote upgrade". Operational-wise though, it remained identical, including boot time (at about 2 minutes).
A tip (that occurred to me after the fact, of course) for anyone running 4 drive raids on a Doremi that needs to change the OS chip for whatever reason...use one machine as your "configuration machine" and keep putting the new chips in there and setting the server up. Then just move that OS chip into the server it was configured for and I don't think you will lose your content raid, because it will have already been configured as a 4 drive raid on your configuration machine. (Note I didn't actually test that theory.)
GDC is also NOT a remote upgrade like Doremi (as Steve has already described), but there are consequences involved with upgrading. The auto-SMS lock Steve spoke about is annoying and the normal boot time went up to 5 minutes, but what kills me is the 20 minute reboot. Yup, if there is a power failure it takes 20 minutes to recover before playback can be restarted! At that point, you've just lost the show.
As Steve pointed out, everyone on a VPF program is REQUIRED to upgrade to this firmware. Either the deadline has passed, or will within the next 2 months.
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