LIVE on R3!!!

We are live on R3!!!  The countdown continues ... it's been 2 days and 5 hours since our RTM environment went down!

The team came in this morning (Sunday morning) and ran through a battery of live transactions.  We ran various integration and each function ran a series of tests.  We decided at about 1pm to call it a GO!  We had a few final validations to complete, but felt confident.

I took the validation team out to a well deserved lunch.

I sent out the official WE ARE LIVE on R3 at around 4 pm PT with setup instructions to get to the new production environment.  The communication also included reminders on other setups and how to get assistance in the event they run into any issues.

Our first group of users came online about 4 hours ago in Asia, the next set of users will come online in 3 hours in France.  Our largest set of users will start coming in at 5 am.  We'll have several folks on site to support them.

We're not out of the woods yet.  We need to get past everyone getting reset up in the new environment.

But it already feels like a WIN!!!

Our environment is upgraded - validating now!!!

DBA is done!

Our Production environment is upgraded!!!

- Database is split: business data and metadata.
- RTM USR layer model is deleted -- security is now in the CUS layer!
- R3 models and hot fixes installed.
- Several jobs were run related to hot fixes, differences in R3 that required some data clean up.

The environment has been passed to the IT Applications team for validations and a few remaining configurations and migrations.

- AIF services and Inbound ports need to be activated.
- Integrations need to be turned on.
- Batch jobs need to be set up.
- Some Transform projects need to be migrated.

We will have a functional team along with some of our IT team in tomorrow morning to perform live transactions to insure we are ready for Monday morning when all our users come online.

Nearly 8 hours in!

Started stopwatch @pvcj013

Initial steps completed:

- RTM Prod environment shutdown to all AX users.
- Batch processing completed.
- Integration activity drained.
- Backup of RTM Prod completed.
- 2 hours in (by stopwatch), DBA emails and says he going "DARK", no more status updates until upgrade is complete.

BUT....

- 5 hours in (by stopwatch) - Email from DBA:

From: DBA
Sent: Friday, November 17, 2017 6:55 PM
To: IT Beaverton
Subject: I wish I knew this before I started the upgrade

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2017/11/17/rogue-planet-could-bring-end-days-this-weekend-numerologists-say.html

Issue logged in our Issue Tracking System:

AX R3 Upgrade / AXRX-286 Delay project due to potential Apolalypse

Issue Type: Other Assignee: BA Created: 17/Nov/17 7:15 PM Due Date: 18/Nov/17 Priority: Critical Reporter: DBA

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2017/11/17/rogue-planet-could-bring-end-days-this-weekend-numerologists-say.html With the breaking doomsday news, we should delay the project to be with our loved ones.

Add Comment

But then closed by our BA:

AX R3 Upgrade / AXRX-286 Delay project due to potential Apolalypse

Change By: BA Planar Status: New Backlog Resolution: Cannot Reproduce Status: Open Resolved

Add Comment

I awake in a stupor....What is going on!  But no worries, we forge ahead!

RTM going down in 1 hour to be transformed to R3!!!

Final reminders have been sent out to all company AX users.

Implementation partner is on-call in case we have an issue (always best to plan for this and then you won't need it right?!?),

DBA and IT have been emailed their steps.

Smoke testing team have identified live transactions to perform on Sunday.

I'm in Vienna right now, so headed for bed.  Hopefully I'll wake to find that we are well on our way!!!

I'll check emails before, between flights, and when I land at home.

Talk to you on the other side!!!

Pinch me - it is happening!  Our R3 upgrade go-live cutover plan is in motion.  Final environments are being prepared...

We are refreshing our R3 Dev environment to be a copy of our final R3 UAT environment.  This is so that we can go back to review any testing or setups.  There are also few items that need to be done manually and won't go live until Dec 1.

One of our RTM environments is being upgraded with R3 components, this is the beginning steps of the upgrade.  When we shut down production which is only HOURS away, we'll copy the production database to this environment and perform the steps to split off the business data.

So in just about 15 hours our Production environment will be going down!  And the split will take place.

Liftoff minus 1.,.

We made the decision on Tuesday to move ahead with our upgrade plans!!!

We made this decision after expanding our test pool for the font issue.  No other users reported the issue.

Communications were sent out:

1. To all enterprise employees to inform them of the upgrade, downtime to AX, and acknowledge and thank the project team.
2. Directed email to all AX users to communicate one-time events, permanent changes, how to report and escalate issues.
3. Directed email to manufacturing with additional information.

Preparations for upgrade:

1. Environment refreshes - (1) copy of current production at the time of the upgrade and keep for reference of personalizations and general reference; (2) copy of our final R3 testing environment for reference; and (3) copy of R3 Prod after upgrade for production support.
2. Smoke test preparations - we've identified several tests that we will perform live in the upgraded R3 environment.  Functional leads will work to gather transactions that can be performed on Sunday after the upgrade is complete.
3. Lunch on Sunday - the smoke testing team will be thanked with a lunch out.
4. Donuts - we plan to get donuts for go-live Monday for our manufacturing staff.  This is because so many will arrive at once and will experience a slow log in and one-time set up needs.

DBA is very busy!!!

R3 Upgrade - The Final Countdown!!!

We are down to the final stretch!

• Our final UAT was completed, a few issues but resolved and retested!
• Communication to executive staff and managers sent a week ago.
• Reminder to Finance and Operations management regarding downtime.
• Final cutover plan completed and reviewed!

• Two issues remain:

1. Mapping of the user's local machine is not working.  This is something we did with group policies previously, it is not working in R3.  We will shift to using a network drive.
2. Font issue - In some cases, the user see the AX menu in a very, very large font.  Upon navigation, it gets very small and then can overlap.  This leaves the user unable to use AX.  We suspect it is a Windows 10 issue.  So far it is only happening with 1 or 2 individuals and only when undocked.  We're asking 30+ people to test on Monday to see if any others experience the issue.  Hope not!

• If we are a go - decision end of day Monday, then we'll take the production environment down on Friday at 3 pm (end of our day shift), and begin the upgrade.
• Conversion activities by IT goes through Saturday afternoon/evening.
• The project team will come in on Sunday morning to do live transaction smoke testing.
• If all goes well, we'll release the system to all users by 4 pm Sunday for our Taiwan colleagues.