Hi,
I agree with what others have said thus far, and although NI never throws in support for servers, so far I have never had an issue with Lookout running on NT 4.0 Server, Windows 2000 Server, or Windows 2003 Server Standard Edition.
There are some major consideration to get your new Lookout up and running. Please read and compare the Lookout Developers Manual for your new and old versions to study some of these issues. A little planning will go a long way.
The 3.8 method of efficient remote data retrieval was through DDE and not TCP/IP. DDE was much more efficient for low bandwidth (or even high bandwidth for that matter). Hypertrends with DDE links on remote clients in 3.8 stored their own database to display the trends, so you could not maintain a contigious history without running the client all the time. DDE had its issues when clients outside local subnets were necessary, so TCP/IP had to be the future. All new hypertrends use URL's for their link and Symlinks provide a two-click change of addresses for an entire process of object links, instead of changing each individual object link.
I had to revamp all my processes to get things running smoothly. The advantage with the new Hypertrend/Symlink combo is that the data display is always from the server citadel database so you have contigious history available at the client. They have improved some early performance issues with hypertrend updates and screen writing, but I would not expect to run hypertrends with constanly changing data on a dialup line....broadband only. If you run multiple traces in remote machine hypertrend objects/displays, I would NOT upgrade to Lookout 6.0 at this time. Lookout 5.1 is much better for this. I think Lookout 6 and the new citadel have several months of grin-and-bear-it development and bug fixing before it is worthy of its calling.
Notice major changes in server/client process ideal configuration and programming methods. The way the clients should be developed has totally changed since Lookout 3.8. Save all your lookout 3.8 stuff including lookout.ini, lookout.sec etc. You will have to import your security files and convert to new versions which now get stored in system32 directory of windows. They get overwritten along with lookout.ini if you reinstall or repair the newer versions so make backups anytime you mess with the installer. Start with a clean install and one at a time, import your old .lks files and recompile. Then save all. Now you can go through the new .lks files and clean up issues. You will have to do some major search and replaces on the old client .lks to work well with new server processes. The server processes will need work too, because you will be deleting all the graphic objects and eliminating any user interface. Only the clients processes which link to the server for their displays, should need graphics and user interface.
Running out of time..that's all for now..
Cheers,
Ed
Message Edited by erblock on 08-24-2005 05:35 PM
