Installation and Upgrade > Upgrade Guide > The Windchill Upgrade Procedure > Using the Upgrade Manager > Upgrade Manager Input Fields > Gather Upgrade Properties > Vaults and File Servers
  
Vaults and File Servers
Windchill makes it possible to store the content files of some ContentHolder objects as files directly accessible at the operating system level instead of using Oracle Binary Large Objects (BLOBs). This functionality uses Windchill objects, called vaults and folders, and links them to real file system folders with a mount.
PTC recommends copying the vault data from the production system for test upgrades. When such systems need to be relocated on another host because the data is not only stored in the Oracle database, but also as local files on the file system, special care must be taken or the links between the metadata and the local files may be broken. This tab collects the information for the file vaults to be configured for this upgrade and to choose the options between modifying the file vault configuration to use different file vault hosts, using the vault configuration already specified in the source database, or to not update the file vault data.
File Vault Configuration
The following options are displayed in the Upgrade Manager:
Vault Mode – Select how you would like file vaults configured for this upgrade.
• Configure Different File Vault Host Information—This is the default option. When this option is selected, Current File Vault Host information is displayed. In the Updated file Vault Host area, enter the new hostname, where the vault content has been copied to, for each existing hostname. This is the recommended option for test upgrades.
• Keep Existing File Vault Host Information from Source Database—This should only be selected for a production upgrade, because vaulted content will be updated during upgrade. If this option is used during test upgrade, there is a risk of production data corruption for the vaulted data. When this option is selected, existing vault information is displayed and no other action is required.
• Do Not Update File Vault Data—If this option is selected, vaults will be completely disabled and there will be no access to content on the production system. This option may be used during test upgrades when vaulted data is not available. Selecting this option means that only the metadata will be upgraded, therefore it is not recommended because necessary updates to vaulted data will not occur. This option should never be used for production upgrades.
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If you select the option Do Not Update File Vault Data, you might see an exception in the method server log with the error message:
java.net.UnknownHostException: <HOST>.<MyDomain>.<MyCompany>.com_3_Upgrade
This error is expected at this point and it will not cause a failure during upgrade. Further logging in the method server log may reflect the real issue.
File Server
Select an option in the File Server list:
Option
Description
Update File Server Configuration
When this option is selected, the existing file server URLs will be displayed and the user will be prompted to enter the new file server URLs. The new URLs should point to the new file servers where the target release has been installed. The user must enter values for each file server URL before proceeding. This option is not available if you selected Do not update file vault data in Vault Mode.
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Make sure that you do not provide production file server Host names and URLs for test upgrades. This might result in data corruption on the production system. This option requires you to install file server sites before starting the master site upgrade.
Manually Configure File Servers Post Upgrade
This option is available if file servers have not been configured before upgrade. Choose this option if the source Windchill system has no file server configured. If source system has file servers configured, choosing this option requires the file servers to be updated and configured manually after the master site has been upgraded. The upgrade is not complete until all remote file servers are updated to the target release.
When this option is selected, file server URLs and host names are set to invalid names to avoid production file server access during test upgrades.
If you are upgrading a solution with one or more file servers having master vaults, this option is not available if you select any of the following options in Vault Mode:
• Configure different file vault host information
• Keep existing file vault host information from source database
This is because certain tasks in the upgrade process require access to file content on a replica master vault.
Keep Existing File Server Configuration
This option is provided for production upgrades when target file servers are installed on the same host machines where source file servers existed.