Overview

With the EOL (End Of Life) event coming up for Windows 7, some users might need to move their current Web+Center installation to a new machine.  This reference document will help you do this.    Please feel free to contact Internet Software Sciences if needed before you migrate even if your support contract has expired or you are running a free version of the software.  Our most important mission of the company is to have you continuing to use Web+Center for your IT support operations succesfully.

DATABASE (Access or SQL*Server Data) is KEY!
The Web+Center Help Desk Application is a web-based, database driven application, Certainly the most VALUABLE part of the application is the data and information you have put into the Web+Center. This value grows as you enter more and more solved support cases and customer information into the database that can be used as a resource for knowledge base searches or customer sales leads. You can always download a new version of the software if a re-installation is required but the data you put into the application can not! Proper regular backups of the Web+Center database is critical to keeping your application operational.

Recommended Application backup procedures
The Web+Center application consists of two primary components. The first component is the application code. It consists of ASP- active server pages modules, includes and some configuration files. All of these files can be found in folder and sub folders typically installed under

c:\Program Files x86\Internet Software Sciences\Web+Center X.0\…
This entire Web+Center x.0 folder file structure should be backed up fairly regularly, especially if you are making customizations to the Web+Center ASP code or if you are using the File download feature and storing attached file downloads that are associated with cases inside of a directory under the Web+Center folder. The attached files are NOT stored in the database and are stored simply as files on the machine. If you are storing related attached files in a directory outside of the Web+Center folder, it should also be backed up.

The Second component is the Web+Center database. For Access database users, the database will be the webcenterX0.mdb (webcenter80.mdb, webcenter90.mdb, webcenter100.mdb, etc) file located in the database subdirectory and will be backed up as part of your folder backup if you are properly backing up the entire Web+Center folder. If you are running SQL*Server as your backend server database, you must separately backup the webcenterX0 database using SQL*Server database backup tools at regularly scheduled intervals. If you have performed a Web+Center version database migrations, be sure that the database you are backing up is the correct database that you are currently pointing your Web+Center application with using your database DSN. It may be possible that the SQL or Access database that you are using is an upgraded webcenter30, or webcenter40, webcenter80, etc  version so verify that you are backing up the correct SQL database.

We recommend you backup your database daily and you should backup your application file directory tree probably weekly or every few weeks. We get calls all the time from Web+Center users who experienced hard-disk crashes on their web server and wondered what utilities we have for database recovery but we have to inform them that users are responsible for their own database backups.

Web+Center application Migration to a new server
The Web+Center application is an easy application to migrate or duplicate on a test server. The basic steps to migrating your Web+Center from one machine to another are outlined below. For more complete details on some of the steps listed below, please refer to the Web+Center installation guide.

• Copy all of the Web+Center files to another machine. To be consistent, the files are typically installed under:
  c:\Program Files x86\Internet Software Sciences\Web+Center X.0\…  You should copy them or zip/unzip them into the same file folder on the new machine so back into C:\program files x86\Internet Software Sciences\Web+Center X.0  – DO NOT DELETE any files from your old machine until you have completely verified the new system is running on the new machine!
• If you are running a SQL*Server Web+Center database, you must backup and restore that database into a new SQL*Server database on the new machine.
• At this point you have completed what the typical webcenterXX.exe install does which is to install all of the Web+Center files into the Web+Center X.X folder.  Depending upon which version you are attempting to migrate, you need to follow the installation steps of that specific install guide (V7, V8, V9, V10) available on our website in the support documentation page.  Navigate to Support / Documentation to reference these install guides.
• Find your appropriate version install guide and follow the step BEYOND the initial  webcenterXX.exe install step and skip around the database setup steps if you are using SQL*Server.
• The basic steps for each install will be
  • Installing IIS under windows features
  • Setting up application or virtual directories with IIS
  • Setting up the ODBC DSN to point to the database
  • Setting up file security permissions for the Web+Center folders and files
  • Testing the Web+Center application.
• Always verify the operation of the new Web+Center before switching users or deleting any code or databases.
• When you ran the original webcenterXX.exe installation executable, it did place some minimal information into the registry which is used when doing un-installs but these registry settings are not required for the web+center operation and re-installing from original executable is not necessary.
• If you have questions, please contact the Internet Software Sciences support center by using their web-based support site or call their friendly support center at Toll Free (888) 949-0942 or (650) 949-0942.

Wishing to Upgrade to our latest V10?  Contact ISS for information on how to upgrade from any previous version.